The best ride in 2016? Not an easy one to choose; cliché but there were many savage days out! But a filthy wet July day high above Morzine riding at full tilt up and down hills with a host of Point1 trained animals and some friends!
Starting on some of the steepest tarmac inclines in the valley; it was threshold pace from the word go. With XCE World Cup winner and everyone’s favourite Asian Caucasian Kenta Gallagher leading it out, waving willy and twisting throttle!
Eventually working our way to a high enough altitude we broke through the thick cloud to be greeted by the heaviest rain storm in months! Soaked to the bone; we proceeded. More willy waving was needed and we picked the trickiest, tech single track climb with slick rock to have a 1 up competition. Little did we know though that the Spartan Race that was happening in Morzine at the time was using the same trails. So with bodies falling all around us and traction dripping away with every mucky revolution, the ride was turning into something beyond epic for how little time we’d actually been out!
After some Spartan spectating and more face-plants (them not us) we traversed some dodgy cliff edge trails, 200m straight down to death on your left! Arriving at our little plateau (where the Instagram was taken), regrouped and high-5’ed…dried off the grips, strapped on a pair of goggles and dropped in to 19 of the best switchbacks in the alps, bermed to perfection by nature and time; the dirt was perfect!
A quick traverse after all the whooping and shouting, another Zone 4 attack to get back up toward Pleney and we rode some bike park senders back home! Less than 2 hrs riding but with a crew of weapons as wild as they were. World Cup winner and racers, EWS winner it didn’t really matter as it was just skids and wheelies and massive craic.
TIL16 #2; racing a bicycle fast is complex physics but mammal brains work physics with heuristics not equations! Fast & Frugal! Train so! pic.twitter.com/FI4YLglpyr
#til16 #6 – live well, smile, give thanks to those you love & those who respect you.. If it matters commit to it, own it, prioritise it. pic.twitter.com/7mY5lz0GZY
#TIL16 #8; adaptability of training planning. Plan B,C,D etc.Should trump plan A As they exist due to better insight into current state! pic.twitter.com/e7oyKOZfbu
#TIL16 #9 – realised that competiton is always a jungle – training atheltes for life in the zoo will never lead to the best outcome. #bufferpic.twitter.com/spX7YXOG2P
#TIL16 – #12 a picture may tell 1000 words, but whole story is made of millions! Understanding movement solutions needs kinetic & kinematic. pic.twitter.com/QOncebdl8n
Obliquity is, I think anyway, pretty tough to pronounce. At least at a glance when reading… < Obb – lick – witty >? That’s about right!
Straight line; direct, plan of action, clear objectives, Do A and B happens, good decisions happen because I know my goals etc…
All of the above, are generally, what goals are all about. With 2017 already here many a human and push-bike piloting human at that will be setting a fire under their arses, setting goals, making resolutions and….sticking to them! The only issue being that life, by which I mean our human interaction with the world at large, often dishes up tasty unknowns…meaning planning to change the plan based off of these unknowns is the only plan we should have!
Amplify and Dampen – rewritten as Grow and Shrink – these are the core “skills” in adaptive planning aimed at achieving your “end-results” or goals. With rigid plans based off of cause & effect thinking A always leads to B, you are often found late to the party when it comes to capitalizing on an emergent situation or dampening a not so desired outcome. So whether that’s making the most of good weather or adjusting your plan to make the most of training even with an injured leg, having you’re goals set “obliquely” means you can deal with all eventualities and be still far more likely to succeed come the “crunch”!
While some smart people thought adding the S.M.A.R.T approach to setting outcome type goals would help, and it does, the “all in” end goal approach still fails so many people that different way of doing things is needed!
Here’s an anecdote to help ease the pain of my ramblings…
Say you want to loose 5kg of fat; to help you climb faster, slow down quicker and shred the bike better; at the same time you want to get stronger!
Goals = Loose 5 kg by April; Add 15kg to Squat and 30kg to Deadlift by May. No that’s all pretty S.M.A.R.T. stuff, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time framed! So next step? Design the perfect strength training plan; higher a nutritionist once off and have them build you a “diet plan”! Job done…follow those two things for the next 3 months and you’l be set!? Lean, mean and keen?
Alas…who feckin’ knows….4 to 5 months away is a long way away! And all the while you’ll be focusing on those numbers, numbers, numbers! And what do those numbers mean…..not much, they are the by-product of success not the measure of it. The are extrinsic focus that will hammer down your intrinsic motivations…
So instead – add some obliquity….
Ok – How about? Become MUCH leaner than I am now; and get stronger in such a way that it shows up when I’m riding.
Instead of normal goals we go for some indirect changes…
Eat protein at each meal
Only snack on fruit or nuts
Visible Reduce portion sizes except for after training meals
Weigh yourself at regular intervals, but also track fat mass lost with pinch testing and take a body composition photo with each weigh in!
Track/Record your training session. Likewise take pics of your meals to compare content and portions
When you weigh in and measure fat mass – see how your habit and lifestyle changes and training practices are working….notice a trend? Amplify it!
For your Strength oblique-goals you could try;
Strength train 3 times a week minimum for 5 weeks
Include 3 compound lifts in each session
Identify limiting factors to movement efficiency and quality
Add 1.25 kg to all compound lifts weekly at a minimum
Track weight lifted and how it felt (speed, effort, intent etc…)
Track your fatigue during and after riding on demanding, steep or “wild” trails
Is your current approach to getting storing leading to noticeable improvements on the bike?
The above are not conditional; they are how you will achieve what you want to achieve. They form behaviors that become habits that become success!
The reason you’ll see “track” or monitor in there so much is that as we strive for our goals we learn about them, learn about how useful that new “place”, new “you”, new “state” will actually be and learn about how our actions shape the speed and direction we are heading in and if that direction is the right one, wrong one or even a better one.
If great cathedrals were just built to pray in then they would not look like they do…if you focus only on the end goal; winning or loosing weight then you’ll miss every last opportunity to improve, to grow, to change, to amplify.
The pounds look after themselves only when we take care and cherish every wee penny.
To summarise:
Set small goals that allow you to build groundwork to large successes
Once larger objectives achieved – don’t stop
Embrace serendipitous discoveries in pursuit of our objectives
Realise that behavior, habit, mindset and emotional intelligence are what achieve big goals long term
Make changes both based on emergent situations and to initiate learning and discovery (will a low carbohydrate day a week work for me?)
Only by doing can you learn how things happened, planning only works as a description of what may happen
There’s nothing wrong with dreaming big and setting outcome goals – they just need to be backed-up obliquely
Oblique goals allow you to tinker and learn on the path to success within an evolving but effective frame-work
The reason for penning this piece is the problems that come from the ever present thinking in “society” that athletes and sports performers are, or at least should be, machines. A coach and/or scientist “engineer” the perfect performance. Guaranteeing race or competition day success through perfect planning, a blueprint, followed to the tee with marginal gainzzz (always 3 Z’s) included. This notion of the human-machine has led us to a point where error and failure are seen as one in the same and that big F, failure is shameful.
For the athlete this idea is so prevalent in most areas of society that it seeps into their consciousness, they deem, without much thought, that anything other than success is a failure and worse yet that failure is to be avoided (at any cost); as yes, it’s shameful, hurtful and always avoidable! Where does this leave the athlete? Anxious, scared and more worried about avoidance of shame than exploring the outer reaches of their current potential!
Copyright: RedBull Content Pool
The failure to deal with failures correctly and the tendency to categorise anything but an outcome exceeding expectation as failure gives the athlete, emotional baggage they may carry, not only to competitions, but also to training and in life generally. I have seen a marked HRV response of pretty impressive amplitude in an Elite MTBer following a results that the athlete deemed as a competitive failure! This baggage can often manifest itself as self-pity, lamenting past error and bad decisions that led to failure. The same baggage can hold fears, fear of the future, fear of similar situations that lead to “failures”, regrets and dwindling self-efficacy! Leading to lower adherence to consistent training, lower motor-output in a given session, lower…well, everything potentially. So the only way to deal with failure successful and use it as a potent fuel for competitive fire is to change what the word means. Change athlete & coach mindsets, change how your discussions are carried out and change everything from goal-setting to decision making skills & training. Error may be seen as volitional by many, but when the coach and athlete realise that both error and failure can come from such differing sources, the volitional nature of error and failure can almost always be questioned and as a result the learning we do and improvements we can make from understanding & embracing failure are monstrous!
I’ve spoken at length with many other coaches and even presented to other coaches the perils of the “categorisation” syndrome in the physical preparation of athletes. Everything has a box it fits in, bio-motor abilities can be isolated for maximum “overload” and bang, thrown together for optimal performance. Well we all know that’s not so; but regardless there are times when simple categorisation helps deliver much needed clarity in a situation. Allowing us to build a framework of sorts within which we can start to dig deeper into the relationships between actions, decisions, error and ultimate failures!
Professor Amy C. Edmondson at the Harvard Business School has a beautiful spectrum of failure that works very well for the athlete and coach.
From Blameworthy to Praiseworthy – understanding the deeper consequences and potential necessity for failure can free the athletes and coaches minds. Free to make better decisions in the future; racing, athlete preparation and training are all quite complex, unknowns have large effects. Small factors can ripple through the “system” with such ferocity and magnitude that everyone from spectators to parents are stunned. Think of the tiny pebble, perfectly placed at random that leads to the front end wash-out as a rider is 100m away from the finish line with World Cup #1 spot all but wrapped up.
This, sometimes knife-edge, complexity clearly lays out the necessity for all involved in sporting performance to accept and embrace the correct “type” of failure and work very hard in making sure “blameworthy” failures do not become habit.
For example, an athlete testing a radically different suspension setup crashes, breaking some fingers and side-lining themselves for 4 weeks! They can still train to an extent but can not compete or train in their sport. Is it a failure? Chance? Circumstance? If some digging isn’t done then the outcome (snapped metacarpals) may be seen as avoidable failure…leading to regret and avoidance strategies, meaning the athlete will never test such a radical set-up again, or worse never test full stop; sticking to what they know and stagnating in “middle-ground” for the remainder of their career!
Crack open the lid on the situation however and we can pull some useful understanding from the outcome and causes and use it to make everyone better. The set-up was radical, but did the mechanic build the shock correctly? The athlete…? They felt pretty uncomfortable pretty much straight away, no confidence i the front end, a lot less grip etc… but he continued to push, choosing a gnarly section of track to hammer a bit harder…leading to some fucked fingers. Ultimately we found out that the rider and mechanic tried a fork and shock change at the same time (process inadequacy), the fork was a lot stiffer and the rider hadn’t gotten any heavier or stronger over the off-season (coaching error?), the rider choose to push on regardless, but it was the 3rd run on this set-up (so the Task challenge was deemed feasible), but due to the complexity of the situation the unknowns came into play and Boom, injury. The rider gave feedback to the mechanic and they came to a hypothesis together; tried it and it failed. Praiseworthy blame? Well it may have been but the mechanic, it turns out, forgot some lock tight and a once function rear suspension unit fell to pieces under some big loads on track. Inattention! Blameworthy failure.
Some fast and frugal analysis means the rider will be happy to test again, the coach may re-address the medium term strength training plan and the mechanic may build himself a new check-list or change his processes!? Failure has consequences, but they should never be feared, only embraced.
Culture is a buzzword in the coaching domain these days, are rightly so, it defines much of what we do each they, it’s the framework with which nations accept actions as habits, it drives the decisions hastily made and when it comes to failures the macro and micro cultures we are in need to accept and learn from them. A Learning culture, primed and ready to analysis, categorise failure and connect the dots (the relationships) between actions, decision making, error and failure!
While macro culture is often much bigger than the coach and athlete, micro is moldable. So whether it’s simply your personal performance culture as an athlete or the team culture you help shape each day as a coach. You can make changes and make sure failures of the praiseworthy type are embraced and the blameworthy type are learned from. The domain you practice in will decide to what level failure can be embraced…failure tolerance if you will, or even failure periodisation!
A factory manufacturing stents for the heart muscle can’t just go exploring a new material out of the blue, as failure in their domain may lead to certain death. But the MTBer wanting to try 5 psi lower tyre pressure or 5 weeks of interval training only can hypothesis and explore. In the complex world of sports performance sometimes exploring the outer reaches of what is currently deemed possible or acceptable will lead to new and radical results or total failure. both as they come leads to progress, as long as all involved are mindful of how we got there and where we wish to go with performance (a good argument for monitoring, feedback regularity and exceptional relationships between all members of the athlete’s team)
Copyright: RedBull Content Pool
Error leads to…?
Growing up in “western” education errors are punished. Perfect technique when kicking a football during “practice”, crisp handwriting, joined for added difficulty in execution! Exploring the grippiness and friction co-efficient of a skateboard filled with school mates? Many errors, volitional or otherwise are punished in most cultures. In a sporting context, specifically bike racing the athlete who puncishes themselves for an error is often committing suicide, doubling the effect of what singularly may have been harmless!
A hallmark of sporting excellence is the athlete who commits a seemingly fatal error but regroups and succeeds. Whether it is the player missing a conversion in rugby, the ski racer sliding on their hip for a second, or the DH racer, who pummels that left hand berm so hard the eject off line…errors build legend, but are avoidable. The are avoided in competition by embracing them as micro learning experiences in training. Without them, the unknowns of competition will destroy an athlete. Errors may be avoided or reduced under pressure, but they are not something that can be totally removed. It’s only through building training environments that embrace the possibility of failure or even are designed with creating a more demanding or likely failure inducing environment that errors that lead to poor performance or lessened outcome can be produced, understood, overcome and ultimately become the norm, so under competition pressure they are seen as mere variability!
An error priming environment can only be created when past failures AND successes are dissected and understood. Bringing us full circle to the relationships between errors, failures, analysis and training. Understand the failure, embrace it as a learning tool, but make changes in training to unearth, test and delve into root causes whether they are errors or decisions. Training to push the outer reaches of your current specificity will lead to better competition outcomes; exactly what we are all here for!
I’ll yap on further about Decision Making in another blog; but take what you want from the above. The core point being if you currently aren’t in the business of embracing, accepting but learning from and making changes because of your failures as a coach or athlete then you’re setting yourself up for more of the same, failures (likely blameworthy), a shift in thinking, culture and mindset maybe needed, A whole new paradigm for you or your team.
In a complex world, like MTB racing or sports in general, failures happen, many are unavoidable, some are very useful but the one thing they all have in common is they can be learned from and used as a step to new heights of sporting excellence.
A cycle of blame, self pity and continued failure awaits those who aren’t prepared to grab all the failures they create or experience by the neck and simply learn.
This is a re-post from the Point1 Facebook page; because frankly Facebook is a horrible medium for longer, dribbling narrative! Enjoy.
So, to carry on from Friday’s yip-yap on Posture and Technique…
One of the relationships (some were trade-offs) listed was
Pre-Reaction~Reaction
The first term above being a misnomer – deliberate at the time. The correct term in fact would be, I think,
Prospective. Prospective control.
And as is becoming very clear in my own development as a coach, the relationship of qualities, traits and sub-systems within the athlete (rider) is of utmost importance, this must be respected & understood.
Relational thinking TRUMPS categorical thinking….always. When we speak about performance improvement at least.
“Prospective control refers to the means by which actors (read: rider in our case) adapt behaviour in advance to the constraints and behavioral opportunities afforded in/by the environment” ~ Fajen, Riley, Turvey; 2009
Prospective control is thus ESSENTIAL for the emergence of skilled actions. Without it all you would do is react to what the trail/race-track is giving you. But as we all know, reaction is after the fact, it is, no matter how “fast” too late. Too late for you the rider to successfully navigate each distinct section of trail in such a way as too link up distinct sections into fast, flowing, effective riding.
So when you see your favourite, rider, athlete or celebrity carry out some reactive “eye-hand” co-ordination drill in the gym, remember that reaction is too slow; and regardless most of the “reactions” we make, when riding an MTB well, are somatic reflexes, not reactions…and once that gym “drill” is learned then it would be the prospective control of posture, position that would allow for faster “reaction” to emerge. So again, full circle, relational thinking; reaction to a stimulus is much faster with better prospective control!
So in the immediate term what does this mean for you if the whole notion of prospective control is new too you?
– Posture = Prizes; the whole reason the “attack-position” bares so many hallmarks and similarities (attractors if you know Dynamical Systems) among good riders is. That that position/posture allows for joint angles, muscle length~tension relationships, peripheral nervous system function, afferent control & force production to operate within an optimal bandwidth to deliver the required technique on trail in the fastest way possible. Prospective control of posture given the trail affordances means “skill” emerges to perfectly match speed. This in essence is “trail efficiency”!
So what can we do to improve our potential to always display usable posture regardless of the trail demands? A shortlist only below….
1. Cultivate & Maintain adequate control, mobility, proprioception, strength and stability through all joints and movement patterns.
2. Develop adequate and ever evolving strength of your “hip hinge”; both eccentric and concentric muscle action, with a stable spine achieved through excellent function of all torso musculature from hip to shoulder (and likely more)!
3. Identify “rate-limiters” to postural maintenance and re-setting. These could be anything from foundational physiological qualities like aerobic metabolism to very specific characteristic qualities like your interaction with a particular size bike, with a certain tyre pressure on certain gradient of terrain!
4. Given the minute detail of the last point above it becomes clear that developing, year on year, season on season, a large physical/physiological buffer of foundational qualities that support good posture on trail will reduce the likely hood of poor mechanics or characteristic rate limiters cropping up under duress/fatigue or emotionally demanding situations.
5. True sport form and improvement in Prime Postures can only be viewed, refined, quantified and understood if enough training takes place in the environments you race in...so that means shredding your bike like fuck in the mountains, up the mountains, down the mountains etc… sounds like fun!
To wrap up a quite abstract post; prospective posture allows for prospective position on trail and that allows for fast, smooth, efficient technique application on trail; which will look to the observer like skill. This is basically all we want as a rider – as skillful navigation of long sections of trail reward us with a sensory and neuro-endocrine response that trumps many experiences in life.
Do this often enough and you get that “flow” feeling…and that leads to intrinsic motivation to shred, removing the space for strange extrinsic motivators like health, weight-loss or victory and in there you find endless drive to improve and a near total lack of anxiety.
So as I said above – relationships of qualities; not categories of qualities please!
Getting strong or staying strong during the race season is one of the never ending tugs of war a coach has to deal with in professional sport. With schedules designed around entertainment and built to suit organisers not athletes the constraints on the coach and athlete are pretty far reaching. Travel, un-pack, prep, ride, huck, race and repeat! Often with the scheduling, it’s easier to do less rather than more or do just enough and not what’s best! With pro mountain bikers on a crisp summer’s day it’s also tough to find the motivation to lift a heavy barbell indoors! This in turn means reduced intent for the session and likely less #gainzzz banked as result….so one solution!? Read on.
Solution
Enter the stopwatch – or actually it being the 21st century the countdown timer on one’s mobile phone!
It couldn’t be simpler – we assign a certain number of minutes (Time Block) to each key area of development, retention or exploitation of the training modes and means that will, based off our best judgment, lead to continued potential to perform on the race bike. To those time blocks we assign some carefully selected exercises and boom! Job done!
The athlete gets the stimulus they need (if they apply themselves), we are guaranteed to get the session done in a certain number of minutes and bongo-bango, we have got the #gainzzz needed in a time crunched environment that puts a bit of extra added and often beneficial “pressure”/stress onto the athlete.
Looks like
If you have the required experience and competency in the gym or even with your own body weight then please give this method a go and report back.
It looks something like
Block 1 – 2 min
Foam Roll – Self Mobilisation – Snapchat – Hairdo
Goal: Feel happy – feel snappy
Block 2 – 10min
Dynamic Mobility Warm-Up
Goal:Be ready to battle 9min in!
Block 3 – 8 min
Activations or Plyometric Work (extensive/intensive)
Squat Jump – X 5
Ankle Jumps X 6
Lateral Bench Jumps (rhytmic) X 6 each side
Clap Push Ups X 3-5
In series with rest as needed for 1 to 2 Rounds – modifications as needed when needed depending on athlete “state”/traits/motivation/needs!
Goal:Build quality/control of stiffness – elastic strength – express “power”!
Block 4 – 20min
5 X 5 Strength – Strength Endurance –
Choose quality -but value capacity
Adjust weight as needed per set – but aim for delivering a challenge
Example
Deadlift @ 2 X athlete BW – prone grip only
Renegade Row @ 22.5kg DB each hand
Rest as needed between sets and exercises – complete all sets and reps in 20min or less!
Goal: Retain Strength in “key” transferable strength movements with increases grip strength potential!
Block 5 – 5min
Cool-Down of choice; mobility; breathing drills, spin out on bike, Instagram laps etc…
Goal: Kick-Start Adaptations!
Total Time = 45min
And finally the KEY to the whole “method” – the stopwatch; once your allotted time for each block is up, whether you’ve finished all reps and sets or not you move on! With little to no rest between blocks other then set-up time!
As the old adage goes – Work will EXPAND to fill the allotted time-frame! There fore in this context, shit gets done.
I get the feeling, often enough that you could say daily, that most people think that there are secrets to sports performance, secrets to health and fitness improvements. “Hidden” tips, tricks and my pet-peeve, “hacks” that provide shortcuts to success. A Those in the know, know situation, those out of that loop are on the back foot, destined to failure because they ain’t hacking their way to success.
With the above “spiel” in mind this series of very short blog posts aims to provide full-disclosure, no bull. Just straight up advice on what works and why in improving different areas of your sports performance and life.
In the fitness industry the pendulum swings from extreme to extreme; but time and again the truth and reality of sports performance improvement is stuck in the fuzzy grey middle. That’s not to say there are no “right” answers, but given how complex humans are the right answers evolve as you do!
I’ll be open to suggestions for topics to cover via social media…so get messaging and mailing.
First up in the series?
Sleep; sleep and a “subtraction” not “addition” approach to using it to improving your health and performance.
While sleep is seldom the questions it is often the answer. No matter what the performance related question I get these days a huge percentage of people who come my way for advice on the shiny pretty trinkets of training (like the best “H.I.I.T Protocol, supplement, diet restriction, fancy strength training method etc…) are lacking in quality & consistent sleep; the late night “treat” of box sets til 4am, the weekend lie in, the disturbed night of wall climbing after 16 snapchat laps and a Facebook frolic while the heads already on the pillow! Sound familiar?
If you want to learn from the consistent World Class performers in any sport and maybe apply some of their approaches to your own health, well-being and performance then sleep is #1. The linchpin of gainzzz. The consistent performers get quality, consistent sleep. That’s full disclosure on my behalf, because from the experience and data I have from Point1 athletes it’s a very obvious trend. Consistent & Quality Sleep = Consistent #Gainzzz
The ever evolving science and understanding about how sleep is regulated and how it affects life and well-being during waking hours is fascinating. With some recent papers published in the area of energy balance and sleep providing some much needed glue to hold many sleep/performance ideas together better than ever.
To list just a few of the key things sleep is responsible for:
Tissue remodeling and muscle growth
Regulation of Energy Balance
Hormonal Health and Efficiency
Metabolic Efficiency and Neuroendocrine Regeneration
Appetite Regulation
Memory Formation
Immune Function and Innate Immunity regulation
Skill/Motor Learning & Consolidation
Many of the above are regulated by a tight relationship between what and when you eat and sleep! It’s clearly a well regulated tightly coupled system that can be quickly derailed by the choices on offer to us in modern life, but now knowing that it’s basically the one two way system between our guts and brains that regulate appetite, metabolism and sleep means we can do things like; eating regular meals, going to bed “full”, avoiding stimulants like Caffeine, nicotine and cocaine (joke) in the 4-6hrs pre bed will all have profound effects on the quality of your sleep!
The point of these blogs is to not get to sciency, all the neurobiology and neurochemistry of sleep science is waaaay beyond me but the magic that happens when we get to REM or Stage 4 sleep seems to be pretty easy grasp! The brain acts like it’s awake but the body is all but paralyzed! True regeneration. The longer you sleep and better the quality the longer you’ll spend in REM sleep and the more of the above awesomeness will happen! Simples.
The How?
Pretty basic stuff that’s easy to implement but will require a no-bull, get shit done attitude
Quality Sleep Environment
Decent Bed
No electronics 45min pre-sleep
No caffeine in the 4hrs pre-bed
Set Sleep time
Set Wake up Time
Going to bed well fed
Breathing Drills and Relaxation if you’re a midfield of fidgeting in the bed!
Wrapped Up
The thousand pin pricks of modern responsibilities can wear the most resilient athlete down, sign hear, be hear, do this, remember that!? Sleep is the ultimate and primary off-set of these pin pricks! You can be as cool as you please but neglecting sleep will break you not make you. Fragility is no man’s friend and the sleep deprived athlete is always a fragile athlete!
It’s not about what fluff and glitter you can add to your training – it’s about removing limitations to performance like your poor sleep quality and consistency!
Very few mountain-bikers will reach “excellence”; defining excellence alone is neigh on impossible. More importantly very few riders desire world class performance, they desire feelings of self actualisation, belonging and achievement. Competency is the word. Competency of technique application… i.e skills!
Following on from the Skill Acquisition 2.0 blog; this one is short and sweet. The Car-park…the place one may go to “drill” skills, doing skills drills. As that is what many a coach, internet guru or other expert claims to be the key part of the learning process. You see similar attempts in team sports; cones, bags, lights and lightning foot-work.
Mountain SkillsDusty Car-park “skills”
The issue lies in that as we’ve chatted about before, car-parks are not where we ride, no-one has the same kind of fun and experiences of awesomeness in a car-park as you get in the forest, mountains and trails! So while I could waffle on, again, about how the car-park drill serves little purpose as it is not the task environment and as soon as we remove the characteristic constraints of the environment we are then engaging in part practice and basically pissing into the wind, I’m gonna curve ball it as our USA friends would say.
Complex vs. Complicated
A core idea behind the rationale of less car-park more bike-park! Mountain-biking of any kind is complex, not complicated. Complicated is getting an internal combustion engine to work flawlessly for years on end. It takes, planning, design, mathematics, exact step-wise construction etc… Shredding your bike down a mountain side takes skill developed over practice in the environment. Those skills never develop in the same way for two people on the same time course, with the same challenges emerging and being dealt with. Contrast that with the Volkswagen production line…every single diesel engine follows the same exact timeline of construction.
Mountain biking is complex not complicated #PAcoupling
So full circle, how does the distinction between complex and complicated relate to your car-park!? Getting better at applying technique in MTB is best done in the task environment…why? Because not only can you get better at the core skill in question but the complexity of the environment will always lead to expaptations…meaning that while outcome 1 was get better at off cambers, you will invariable through natural process of self organisation get better at or discover other solutions to numerous other movement problems on the hill!
To clarify with an example. Imagine a Long left side off-camber with a right hand corner on exit, numerous tree roots, variable soil type and a long bumpy entry before the off-camber versus a car-park drill with a long plank of wood or MDF propped up against a curb or wall. looking to “mimic” a left side off-camber.
Both may lead the learner to discover the necessary lateral weight shift, posture, speed control and braking to successful enter, roll on and exit the off camber. But only one environment will lead the learner to discover or organise better posture in rough terrain, adequate perceptive skills for organising posture during one skill to prep for the next required technique…only one scenario will allow the learner to discover the effect tire pressure or direction of travel has on bike and body when encountering roots and rocks etc…
The car-park scenario assumes complicated movement solutions to a problem. The mountain allows complex solutions to movement problems to emerge, solidify and exapt other positive learning experiences.
The King of the Pits is impressive but seldom King of the Hill!
Constraints Led Approach to Skill Aquisition
I’ll expand on this more soon as we’ve not even covered the possible and plausible idea of “negative transfer” that may occur in exaggerated part practice. Nor have we covered the issue of the “car-park” removing so many affordances that should dictate technique that you may be just simply wasting time.
Comments welcome.
And for those who wish to read more about the above ideas in a general context – click here.
Stiffness helps keep the vision looking where it needs to!
For the past 18 months or so I’ve wound my way around a slippy path of discovery. All to do with motor learning and how we acquire, learn, solidify and modify “skill”. Traditional theories (linear) versus non-linear theories!
Now skill is essentially the application of technique in the task environment; the constraints created by that environment lead to affordances or “relation between us and object in environment that allows actions to help achieve our task goal – e.g. pull versus push door handle” that allows us the rider to make decisions on the best course of action to successfully complete our task (getting bike and rider to another point on the hill)! That last sentence has all the hallmarks of the thoughts of someone who has read and attempted to apply to their sport, the theories of ecological psychology and dynamic systems to the perception-action model! All separate but now converging ways of theorising and modeling learning and doing.
Before I continue there is one thing you need to keep in mind; theories, even if widely accepted are not perfect nor correct and as for models, some may be very useful, but NONE are perfect.
Traditional theories (schema, top down) hold the central command centre of the brain on a pedestal as chief decision maker; we get info in from our senses, make a decision then act. The Ecological approach peppered with some dynamic systems modeling downplays the importance of our brains and instead takes the organism (rider) and the environments interaction as key. Rider perceives (searches for) info on trail and the action needed to complete the task is created not just by the brain but by the whole system.
So if you have got this far reading, what I’m going to waffle on about next is my very simplistic take on how some of these models and theories converge & can possibly be applied to getting better at riding your bike and how they may or may not work together to explain why you find improvement hard or not! This will be a lot briefer than it could be, mainly because I’m very very under-educated in motor-learning….for now!
“Skills” training on your bike must have clear intention. Designed in such a way as to increase your map of potential pathways to your destination. These “maps” though are not rigid set actions controlled by the brain and CNS, they are more so experiences banked so deep they become intrinsic, made up of knowledge of affordances (stuff we know the value or utility of in relation to our own physical abilities) that link together to make actions purposeful and successful.
The Intention – action model applied in relation to how we learn motor skills is useful. By in large our intentions are often similar; aiming to get to a certain point on a trail as fast and efficiency as possible. Linking up these points to the finish line or trail end. These intentions lead to the search for movement solutions to our problem of getting form A to B!
By increasing your experience of technique application you create more usable and adaptable road maps to successful completion of a task. In essence a wider or more complete map of possible movement solutions to these problems. These solutions become “stable” when they are transferred to our hard disk of learned skills. But unlike in top down theory of motor learning and control, this hard disk storage does not mean we have to apply rigid solutions to each technique application problem, but instead we have stable solutions that then allows the body/organism freedom to make very fine necessary changes to posture, control and technique application without consulting some sort of master plan maker in the brain! “Preflex” control is how it is termed in Dynamical Systems thinking.
For us the MTB rider it makes perfect sense! Very conscious deliberate technique application takes time, often feels cumbersome and even if it leads to successful outcomes often does not leave the learner satisfied! This comes back to coaching also, repetitive reinforcement of internal cues, telling a rider to get that foot down or elbow up etc… leads to often quick but very short lived or limited retention of proficient. Instead letting the rider learn that their technique in switchbacks is developing well by how much exit speed they carry is far more successful, sure it may take some direct internal cues at first, but true mastery will only come if the organism/rider can be left enough time to self organise and eliminate shitty solutions to the motor problem on their own.
Basically give yourself some building blocks of what the solution may be but then go wild with attempting the different solutions until brain and body gel with the environment. After all all task are environment specific.
Repetitive non characteristic technique training (car-park and cones) serves purpose only for beginners. Removing yourself from the task environment (mountains and dirt and rocks and the like) means little opportunity to pave new roads or improve the surface and width of existing ones. You want to immerse yourself in the environment of your sport so you can build a bigger more robust network of potential choices of action (solutions) for you to use to achieve the task goal at progressively increasing speeds.
Skill basic with beginners – the right approach?
Your body and brain as a dynamic system will decide based on current physiological state and past experiences of similar tasks in that environment whether you have the required capacities to safely achieve the movement intention. If you’ve not developed prior successful completion of such a task then aiming to complete it at speed is not going to happen.
Thus progressive overload of technique application in the task environment is the most efficient way to improve “skill”. At first “overload” will be expensive, physically and metabolically, but economic learning will lead to a large reduction in cost once we’ve banked up some technique application experience!
Start small and slow but aim to do so in your characteristic sporting environment. In our case that’s the woods, hills, mountains, forest and wilderness of MTB. If a solution to a movement problem (lets say hopping onto a slippy bank to rail a left hander with more exit speed) requires a very basic technique like lateral balance & a bunny hop then these can be developed short term outside of the environment but need to be swiftly applied to the task environment if you are going to solidify that movement solution and bank it deep as a permanent solution!
No coach or friend would need to tell you how good your bunny hop is if the bank you hop onto is high enough; as the end result dictates that you have indeed mastered bunny-hops because otherwise you would not have made it up onto that bank!
Another example; Freezing up on steep muddy terrain and sliding to a stop on your bum just means that your brain and body have decided that you do not poses the required physical and movement skills to reach your “destinations” so playing/riding in the mud; progressively adding in more and more contextual challenges is the only option to improvement. Or at least riding in loose slippy terrain. For weather it’s sand or mud many of the solutions and self organization that occurs to be proficient in these environments are highly transferable!
Likewise a longitudinal analysis of whether you have any physiological or bio-mechanical limitations that reduce your ability to maintain the postures and limb positions needed to apply technique is needed for many. Off and on the bike training can serve the purpose of improvement in this area!
So to sum up for now on what will hopefully be an evolving blog topic
Whole Practice always – Part Practice Seldom
Discipline Characteristics matter when elite performance is desired.
Gross technique mastery first but swiftly applied to various task environments.
Unfamiliar links between sensory perceptions and motor skill lead to acquisition of new skill – as-long as system perceives task and environmental constraints as achievable given current physiological state!
Core Movement patterns, Core Techniques and adequate basic motor skill (balance etc..) are fundamental to improvement on the bike & can be trained both on and off the bike to a finite point when looking for improvement.
New techniques can be introduced outside of the task environment but cannot ever be mastered anywhere but the task environment.
Although visually and perceptually similar, core techniques like cornering must be applied in all environments under all constraints encountered for it to become a universal “skill”. Berms vs flat turns, mud versus gravel etc..
Knowledge of your performance is not as effective as knowledge of your results. Think “ohh coach said my elbow was in a good position for cornering” vs. “I slayed that turn and carried huge exit speed out – 4km/h faster than before”
Think about “overloading” your skill training with more varite of terrain and possible task solutions over more repetition. Slamming the same turn 100 times will never be as useful as slamming 100 different turns.
If you are bad at riding in a particular environment, ride in it more.
If you can’t bunny hop because of poor ankle mobility, fix the mobility off the bike, but don’t wait to apply technique when new found ankle mobility occurs….it goes hand in hand. As you will not see linear, step-wise improvements in either quality.
Improving your riding is a constant renovation; not a 1 time re-build.
The gym can be used to improve technique application but only if movement patterns, muscle action and intentions carry over to your on the bike movement.
Provide yourself with variety in your task environment to achieve meaningful improvements in performance. But avoid part practice when doing so.
Variation in technique application via varied environment constraints = robustness and less fragility in skilled movement.
Getting better is fun because it requires riding often, in varied terrain in various conditions under a variety of physical, ecological, meteorological and psychological conditions!
Currently learning a little but making a conscious effort to apply and above all “concrete” fresh ideas, concepts and thinking I’ve learned in the last 3 months (there has been alot of self-led learning lately). Application of knowledge is the best part of coaching, the most, maybe only essential part of coaching and at times the most taxing…at least for me.
For applying new ideas to real world situation and real people (athletes) sets them and ultimately me up for failures. As absolutes don’t exist in sports performance I’ve only got principles to guide me so as long as the application of new “things” is underpinned at all times by principle then, well, then we should all be OK!
Excepting success graciously and failure willingly and learning from either is after all key to growth!
Prepared to learn no matter the outcome; mind at ease because discipline happened!?
Growth for the athletes I coach, myself as a coach or rider and growth in general is all about MINDSET – some even call it Growth Mindset and you’ll see plenty of sweet wee info-graphics out there with all sorts of “people with a growth mindset don’t watch TV” type think on the go out there! Lovely stuff!
So yes, I am all about the growth mindset, but I don’t think it something best actively cultivated more something that is made obligatory for you by your approach to your environment.
So Step 1 would be make sure your environment is pretty good. If it’s not change it or if that’s not possible….deal with it! Don’t have access to a sweet gym with Olympic bars and coloured plates? Only got too dumbbells and 5 X 5m sq. to train in – fine shut up and get to it…..but of your goals or needs involve increasing max strength or re-habing from injury then maybe seeking out the fancy gym or making your will have to happen. That’s environment management in a nutshell – deal with it or change it!
Tight-Rope of Mindset – Thanks to trainugly.com
Anyway I’ll get to the point; Discipline = Freedom or Discipline creates Freedom. A guy called Jocko Willink said that. He was a military man where discipline keeps you alive in the country you’re invading for no good reason.
But the discipline he’s on about isn’t in relation to conduct in the presence of superiors. It’s self-discipline and that’s where it relates or transfer to all things coaching and performance. The key common trait in people that perform consistently is discipline and as I’ve said 100000 times consistency is King when it comes to progress. So where does the freedom come in you ask? Well everywhere. FREEDDDOOOMMMM! 😉
When you are disciplined daily then freedom happens. It may seem paradoxical…but it’s not. It’s freedom in light of your goals, wants, needs and desires. For example, self-discipline removes doubt, removes internal ego struggle and get’s ride of ineffective and incessant daily micro-management. All of the above suck time out of day and reduce your freedom. Not it may feel like sticking to your 6;00 a.m turbo session removes freedom, but all it does is create it.
When it’s done it’s done. Add into that the fact that you know after a hard turbo session you needs 60g of Carbs, 30g Protein and some fats, along with the fact you know you’ll be hunger again at 10 a.m. due to EPOC and BMR effects. So your A.M snack is sorted. Homemade muffin, a banana, 1 yogurt and some coffee anyone?
Discipline in daily choices creates simplicity in subsequent choices and that frees up all the space in your head to think and do much more, frees up all the hours outside of training or work or chores, job done!
No micromanagement means you not worrying about every wee detail….you’re not guilty about missing your morning training, you’re not wondering if you deserve that snack, your not wondering if you’ve eaten the correct thing before training this evening, your not wondering if 45 min between the end of work and picking the kids up is enough to warm-up, Mobile, foam roll, train, cool-down, yoga and then eat your Paleo brownies while praying to the high fat gods. All that micro management bullshit is finished with. Results happen because your discipline leads to consistency and that consistency frees up your life for anything and everything else!
Sounds to simple maybe? But the whole idea has it’s own built in safety net and back door. If you’re consistently disciplined and achieving your goals but not happy or not achieving your goals then those goals aren’t for you. Move on, next chapter, new focus!
For the coaches out there reading this you may be wondering how that relates to the you? Well discipline in your approach to everything you do with athletes you train gives them a solid framework, a system almost that they grow to understand and love, they will, if you do your job right preempt you in many of your choices and decisions, meaning that they to now have more freedom and that empowers to “buy-in” to your training philosophy. The athlete will know the goal of a session, understand the intention and desired out come and as such have the freedom to almost build their own training around the key outcome goals. They won’t be doing anything for coach it will all be for them!
Discipline = chicken dinners; just ask Callaghan
The final anecdote is a classic – the coach, athlete or exerciser, perceived by friends, acquaintances and family as the fitness fanatic. In reality they are just the disciplined and it’s easy, why? Because it works!
There’s a party or social gathering and you the “fanatic” refuse alcohol or the pre-dinner nibbles or whatever other processed filth is circulating the room. Some frown upon your “arrogance” or “impoliteness” others marvel at your self-discipline commenting about how it must be so hard!? But the discipline =freedom; freedom to know you ain’t missing out on anything by avoiding the pringles, freedom to eat plenty of extra meat and veg at dinner, freedom to know that there is no “catch-up” HIIT to “endure” because of your il-discipline one night, Freedom to eat the dessert; why? Because you know discipline works, discipline is easy, discipline creates freedom and freedom = fun!
It’s the sporadic jump on a training plan, juice diet, boot camp loving, yo-yo dieting self loather that goes on a fitness binge or dry January that then must reward their “discipline” with something “forbidden” that never gets results, never tastes true freedom and never, ever has any real fun!
The disciplined has all the freedom; freedom to know that shredding 5 days in the Alps won’t kill them, freedom to eat that extra dessert, freedom to choose a road ride over MTB or freedom to just sit and enjoy a coffee with friends knowing the work got done, gets done and will again and again, get done!
The discipline to do the simple important stuff always has a knock on effect everywhere else in your life! Simples…freedom!
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