Posts under ‘Training’

Cyclocross is in full swing around the country. This fast-growing sport is turning the heads of both mountain bike racers and road racers alike. It’s interesting, it’s fun, and it’s a great way to spend winter months on the bike. Cyclocross is known for being an extremely intense and largely skill-based sport. It can be [...]

School’s back in, it’s officially fall, and several of my friends have already succumbed to one form of sickness or another. Since it’s timely, I thought I’d talk a little about illness, and how you should handle training when you have caught a bug. To start, let’s define the parameters for cessation of training, because [...]

With the start of the Dirt Derby series this week, it’s time to dust off your cyclocross skills or find some if you never had any. I mentioned earlier this week a VeloNews ‘cross tutorial video, but came across this gem from the late 80s by British racer and coach Martin Eadon called Off the [...]

It’s inevitable: it’s been hot, you’ve been busy, and summer has flown by.   Your favorite race is just around the corner, but no mind, you’ve been riding, you’ve been preparing… or, have you?   We all know that terrible feeling-the start of a mountain bike race, or the first big attack in a road race, and [...]

If you’ve been reading this blog over the last few months, you will have picked up on a few key aspects of my training philosophy: *evidence based exercise prescription *emphasis on quality over quantity *keeping it simple, fun, and adaptable to a real-world environment *focus on specificity of the events For the most part, these [...]

August came early this year. Unfortunately for those of us in Texas, that means we have a long, hot summer in store for us. With triple digit temperatures becoming the norm, I have been receiving workout reports from clients that, I can safely summarize as saying, “who turned on the furnace? I’m melting out there!” [...]

Generally speaking, people think of interval work as the short, intense work bouts followed by varying rest periods. However, there are times when a longer, less intense interval can really boost your abilities. Almost every athlete I take into my coaching program, particularly the mountain bikers, reports a similar racing pattern: shorter steeper hills are [...]

For many of us, spring racing is winding down, and it’s time to build more fitness for next season. Most often, riders begin to approach their off-season by initially taking a week or two off, then going into base training. Base training is traditionally approached with a set of long rides and a substantial increase [...]

Now that many of you are knee-deep in the race season, it’s a good time to talk about an important aspect of the training process: recovery.   If asked, most athletes will be able to tell you that recovery is something that is necessary after a hard workout, and they would be correct. But the [...]

Stretching has been getting a lot of attention in sports literature recently, so I thought it would be a good time to talk about its role in sports conditioning. First off, it is important to understand the purpose of stretching: to increase range of motion (ROM) about a specific joint by stretching the muscles around [...]