Despite his relatively young age, the strong sense of old school was always present when 29-year old IAM Cycling Heinrich Haussler came into mind, considering his reluctance to ride in gloves regardless of the conditions and never hidden devotion to East German training methods.  

Following such untypical approach served well the Australian classics specialist on many occasions, as he managed to claim stage wins at the Tour the France, Vuelta a Espana, Criterium du Dauphine, Paris-Nice or Tour the Swisse among many other, as well as to finish second at both Milan-San Remo and Tour of Flanders in his most successful 2009 season.

However, professional cycling has changed radically over the past few years, as the more scientific approach has been introduced into both developing training methods and technology – let the infamous Team Sky “marginal gains” skinsuit be a sufficient example, and Haussler slowly accepted the idea that it became impossible to make any further improvement on his past results without including some of the modern solutions to his preparations.

The base training of Australian rider remains quite the same, starting with training cross-country skiing during the winter break, but while rethinking his approach to professional cycling he decided to make a compromise between following East German methods with using contemporary innovations, as he discovered that they can actually work to his own favor.

"With the old East German style of long hard training with big gears, you can only get to a certain level," Haussler told Cyclingnews in Qatar.

"Now I’m working on my VO2 max, my lactate threshold and stuff like that."

"With Garmin, we had to use it as part of the team, but this is the first time I’ve actually worked with someone and done interval training, motor pacing, sprints and proper weight training," he said.

"All this kind of stuff is new and it’s something I’m getting a big advantage from."

A long recovery period after the injury obtained in 2010 probably took its tool in terms of changing Haussler’s philosophy, since he has discovered after returning to racing that despite achieving highly respectable results in the cobbled classics, always defined as his main objectives, he was unable to match the power and explosiveness of his rivals when it came to the finale.

"I’ve always thought, ‘fuck, I’m old enough, I know what to do, I’ve done everything by myself since I was a kid.’ But last year, everything went perfect in training, and I realised that you can only reach a certain level by training long distances in a big gear at a low heart rate," Haussler explained.

"You just need to bring in more of this up and down stuff because that’s what the classics are. You keep building lactate, then recover ASAP, and then go and do it again."

Once Haussler included some contemporary innovations to his everyday training, he started to question the efficiency of his old school methods, claiming that there is only a certain level you can reach by following a traditional approach in preparations and it’s impossible to go any further.

"After skiing that long, for the first two weeks I was just suffering and I thought I’d done everything wrong and that the season was just fucked," he said.

"But you need that transition to get the leg speed and get used to being on the bike again, because skiing is just about power and long efforts. You need to get used to riding again."

Before his second season in the IAM Cycling kicked-off, the other classics specialist in the person of Sylvain Chavanel joined the team. Haussler believes that together they are able to form a highly formidable combination for the cobbled races in the northern Europe, and the presence of the renowned Frenchman should significantly boost a morale of all their team-mates.

"We’re two very different riders but we both love the classics and we only can benefit from that, and maybe the younger guys who haven’t done the classics so much might be motivated by having a big name like Chavanel on the team," he said.

What is very understandable, the change in philosophy of Australian rider influenced some other, particularly rethinking the racing schedule and redefining main objectives for coming season.

In years past, Haussler has made a point of performing strongly at the Tour of Qatar – he won the points competition here in 2009, 2010 and 2011 – but this season, his thoughts are trained firmly on Gent-Wevelgem, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Even Milan-San Remo, while still on his programme, is no longer a priority.

"This year I’ve just come to Qatar and Oman trying to use them as races to really peak for the classics," he said.

"I’m really trying 100 percent to be really good for those two or three weekends."

"This year I’m not arrogant, I’m just confident, because I feel good, I feel healthy."