17 days until the start of the 2017 EWS season and 49 days almost to the minute until racing will conclude at UCI DH WC #1 in Lourdes.
The freshness of it all, new teams, new riders on new bikes, colours, kits, venues and new ventures. Wheel size or watts the shiny new things are what keep so many people coming back for a fresh dose of race fever. Whether rider, racer, industry hack, journalist, spectator, coach, fan or fan-boy…this “newness” each season drags the heart-rate a little higher, pushes the addiction a little deeper and keeps the glint of hope shimmering in everyone’s eyes.
Wrapped up with the freshness & newness is the sameness – a must, the blend of fresh and same-old keeps things authentic, keeps DH and Enduro what they are – racing can’t change too much from the basics; A to B, fastest wins. That’s what we are all here for. Displays of preparation and execution against the clock.
Driven by instinct maybe or more possibly culture, the “players” whether fans or media keyboard jockey will speculate. Bench racing; who’s on the up, who’s got what to prove?
The athlete’s in all this need to be strategic, strategy implies purposeful thought. Getting sucked into speculation and expectation is a recipe for disaster – tactical nightmare, shuffling emotions about as best one can only partially dealing with the physiological fall-out inevitably linked to emotional reaction.
2016 is gone. Those with paper to fill will talk of the title defense, the rising star or failing veteran. But there is nothing to defend.
Whether your name is Rude, Ravanel, Callaghan or Winton. Atherton, Gwin, Seagrave or Minnaar. Races can only be won. There is no defense to make. Each week, day & racing minute are opportunities for action only. If you aim to write some history, there’s only one way to go about it.
Races & Championships are only won, never defended.
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.
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!
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.
Time to stop giving Facebook so much free content love so here’s this week’s Top tip Thursday on the site for you! January has been kind to some and alot less kind to others – but it is a perfect time to work on improving your wet weather shredding with some of these mud riding tips below!
These tips where actually something that came up in a discussion with an Enduro racer I coach looking to “solidify” key approaches to winning when muddy!
While there is plenty more to riding in the wet and mud – especially in different soils of different gradients – the above is a nice place to start! Questions welcome.
Our second round of quick fire 5 questions is with another Scot, Scotty Laughland. One of the newest athletes on the Point1 roster of weapons; he’s just come off his best ever EWS result (33rd) at Tweedlove.
Mature in word, fresh in the face, downhiller turned Enduro shredder Scotty Laughland has, at 25 years young, bags of experience on a push bike, an undergraduate degree in Engineering and some serious coconut sugar based baking skills!
“Having made such huge improvements to every aspect of my racing in only one year of working with Chris, I can’t wait to see how much further we can go together. He is always striving to learn and improve, this, along with his work ethic means I couldn’t think of anyone better to help me achieve my goals. I’ve enjoyed this years training more than any year before and the results show that. He understands that a happy athlete is a successful one and that everyone is different!”
It’s early/mid October. Your race/riding season if you live in the Northern Hemisphere is pretty much over and doesn’t kick off again for a good few months…
So how did things go? Goals achieved? New benchmarks set, personal bests on Strava, race wins, got through a week in the alps without arm-pump or alcohol poisoning?
Taking some time to reflect on the riding season just gone, review your approaches and execution of training, riding, planning and nutrition and asking yourself or your coach some tough questions is a must if you want to plan better, improve and grow for 2015!
Do the worthwhile things better, avoid repeating the same mistakes as last year and generally just improve the whole process. So how do you go about doing it? Well I’m gonna give you a few “top-tips” below and hopefully some ideas to start the mental juices flowing so you too can review your season just gone!
1) Question Time
Sit down or stand up…pen and paper, voice recorder or chalk board! It doesn’t really matter. Just answer, honestly, some key questions about your race season and preparation period (off-season) just gone. Some examples to get the ball rolling!
– Did I achieve my goals?
– What was my best result?
– What gave me the most satisfaction this year?
– Biggest disappointment and why?
– What training did I enjoy the most/least?
– How was my mental approach to riding and racing? Nervous, relaxed, focused etc…?
– Did my coach listen to my needs, questions, demands etc…?
– What physical qualities did I lack during riding racing the most?
– Did I complete all training as prescribed most of the time?
– Did I diligently fill in training diaries?
– Did you enjoy training/riding/racing/the process?**
– Was I too sore from training to race well?
– How was my technique, freshness and FGF during the critical race periods?
The list of meaningful questions is endless, you could ask yourself or work together with your coach to ask all the key questions to cover all areas of performance planning. If you have a coach and a “post-season” review is not something they do then maybe there’s something up! Because it really is an invaluable process.
**that’s a very important question right there
2) Data Review and reflection
Keeping track of performance parameters is something both athlete and coach should do! It’s a team/joint effort. Interpreting the data and implementing change is up to the well educated athlete that coaches themselves or a coach if they employ a coach. But if there is no data to interpret then there are no changes to be made!
Same goes with a post-season review. Reviewing all the data you canto see how things really panned out is a very constructive way to make changes for the next year. So where would we get this data from? Well hopefully from a variety of sources, but valid reliable and measurable ones…because remember if you can’t measure it it’s awfully hard to change it.
First up is a training log or Training Tracker as we like to call it here at Point1 – It’s simple way to keep track of progress, see patterns in adaptation to training and recovery loads but also a great way to keep athlete and coach honest with a mix of objective and subjective scores and data! What does it provide post season, well it provides a deeper insight into each training week, block or period. You can then use it lined up against other data, results or memories to join some dots and see what did and didn’t work right from week 1 of the Off-Season to the final day of the “In-Season”.
A sample Point1 Training Tracker
Like mentioned above reviewing data from the year gone past can come from many sources, the more the merrier aslong as you know what to look for and where to make conclusions from! Other great sources of data would be;
HR data from training sessions – session totals, Trimp scores, HRrecovery (HRr), resting HR’s pre/post session etc…
Power Metre Data – average powers, peaks, normalised powers over rides or weeks of training, power profiles of your event, best events, worst events, fatigue, freshness, cardiac drift (need HR data for that) and 1,000 other things!
Race results and split times – www.rootsandrain.com is every MTB races best friend; % time behind winner, faster at split 1/2 or 3, lap times, stage times – faster early on, late on, need to work on fatigue, energy management, efficiency or mental arousal etc…
Strava or other such nightmares – comparing times, climbs and duration from many years, rides, weeks or months. Overall “on the bike volume”.
Gym based results – weights lifted, exercises selected, injury prevention or pre-hab volumes, specific testing, transfer of training.
Video analysis – races, training, go-pro etc…
It’s a pretty comprehensive list really, so many ways to look back and reflect on your work done and results acheived. Did they match your goals, what was good, what needs to be changed?
Comparing HR data from two similar sessions!
3) In-Season Planning
I always find it funny when people say, “ohh you don’t need a coach during the season”; “it’s off-season that counts”, “just ride your bike” etc… Well put very simply, 6 weeks of just riding your bike with no real plan can very easily un-do much of your hard work during the off-season.
So with that in mind an excellent area to “review” post-season is how your training loads and planning where during the racing or riding heaviest part of the year!
Did you train, maintain or just ride your brains out? What worked and what didn’t (training tracker is very handy here). How was your balance of fitness, freshness and fatigue?
Honestly to think that you’ll get away with just 6 months+ of racing with no plan and come out “on-top” is crazy! Some athletes come in to their race or riding season hot and fat and burn out, others come in cold and build some sort of specific fitness on the bike slowly, others get it all just right and last the whole season of racing or riding in pretty much tip-top shape!
What you should be looking to review from your “in-season” planning is individual and sport/discipline specific but here are some good places to start.
1) Training load, type, timing and volumes:The idea of Residual Effects comes mainly from “Block Periodisation” made popular by coaches like Issurin, Verkhoshansky and Bondarchuk. Using the “half-life” of the key physical qualities of your discipline to decide when and what to train and in what volumes is a great place to start for your in-season planning and like-wise a perfect place to start reviewing your in-season plan.
Did you leave weeks and weeks without training your Max Strength or Speed? How important are these qualities to the outcome of your event? How often does your tech training or riding target certain qualities, if it does is the load sufficient to maintain or improve that physical quality? I’ll let the Table below explain the rest.
Training Residuals – Use it or Lose it?
2) Race week! The one time when many things go “tits-up” for racers. What can you improve on for next year? The good, bad and VERY UGLY? The questions you need to ask?
– What training did I do mid-week?
– Did I recover fully from last weekends riding/racing?
– What active recovery modalities did I use? Did they work?
– Di I reduce or maintain training volumes in week of race? Why?
– Did I come into race day fresh both mentally and physically?
– Was there enough or too much physical, technical or tactical training during the week?
– What was my mental state like during the week, race, weekend etc…?
Two very different “In-Season” Race weeks
Train hard in the off-season and then get the fine-tuning in-season right and you’re on to a winner!
3)Recovery – What strategies did you use for recovery? Why? When? What worked, what didn’t? Too much of a good thing is always a bad thing. So planning your recovery in-season is key and as such reflecting on what worked pos-season will help you make far better decisions for next year.
The key is to promote recovery both mentally and physically but not to reduce or blunt our windows of opportunity to train and adapt.
Fitness – Fatigue + Freshness = Form
Remember that the mental state is just as important as the physical one, so plan recovery accordingly!
How do you scale your recovery? – McGuigan
So there you have it three key areas to review after your riding or racing season. There are certainly other areas and avenues to pursue, but the above is a good start.
Feel free to add your own thoughts and ideas in the comments below!
Ahh King TUT! Sounds awful right? TUT = Time Under Tension. King, because this is the King way to add some time under tension to your strength training sessions!
RFESS
The RFESS is a Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat what some people call the Bulgarian Split Squat. One of the ultimate lower body exercises and a move that most certainly should be in your arsenal. Simply one leg behind you on a bench, chair or whatever is handy! The video will explain the rest.
The bang for buck aspect of the RFESS is nearly unmatched. Single leg extension, good glute drive is required, supreme control of the stability of the hips (glute medius, adductors, abductors) and torso/core (antiflexion, anti later-flexion), balance, proprioception (especially when loaded asymmetrically), eccentric load on the hamstrings, ankle stability and mobility are challenged and you even get a little hip flexor stretch for good measure.
It also lets you see pretty quickly if you have any strength deficits between legs.
Further more seen as you can literally go wild with different loading parameters and combos, the additional and/or specific challenges you can induce for the torso, hips, and hip extensors in terms of strength, power, stability and mobility are near endless!
It’s a pretty straight forward move to learn and is perfect for people with knee pain as it usually doesn’t cause much issues. I would recommend though that you follow a simple progression before even thinking about even body-weight RFESS’.
Normally for Point1 athletes it goes – Split Squat – Body-weight squats – reverse lunge – RFESS. Getting yourself comfortably and stability into the lowest position of the RFESS is about a good balance of mobility and stability, so those need to be well taken care of before you start!
King TUT
Ahh Time under tension. Creating and managing mechanical forces in muscle is, well in it’s essence, “strength”. Changing the speed with which you lift weight through the full or partial ranges of concentric, isometric and eccentric contractions manipulates how long the muscles have to be “working” i.e. receiving neurological info, using ATP as energy, sliding actin over myosin etc…
Increasing TUT is primarily a technique used by bodybuilders to induce hypertrophy, that means gain in size of muscle or as the kids like to say these days GAINNNNZZZZZZZ!
It’s been shown in laboratory setting though that increasing TUT to be an effective way to increase protein synthesis in the muscles (Link)! But clearly has it’s limitations for the mountain-biker as we want fast, powerful contractions the majority of the time in training!
The method in the vid below is a combo of decreasing the speed of the eccentric/lowering phase of the RFESS, pausing for 1 then bringing your self back up into a half rep (halfway to the top of the movement) then back to the bottom and finally EXPLODE to the start position.
That EXPLODE is very important as being explosive through extension of the knee and hip joint is very important for the MTBer. The other portions of the lift challenge single leg eccentric strength and also go a long way to increasing your muscular endurance through partial and loaded contractions -something that happens very often on the bike as you hop, pop, pump and push your way over a variety of terrain, especially when things get steep or have large g-outs etc…
The final piece of the puzzle is the loading! In this vid i used what is called the “goblet squat” loading, holding a heavy Dumbbell in the goblet position, is a great “self-limiting” way to load as it really challenges the anterior (front) core while safely loading the legs!
Start smart – be confident but don’t be afraid to be humbled by the RFESS and the King TUT method!
P.S. the “half rep” idea was 100% stolen from Ben Bruno!
Like a flapjack but designed to maintain or maybe, who knows, even improve performance during your training rides or sessions! Between DH runs, on the lift when partaking in Broduro laps or trail side on a trail ride, these PowerJacks are simple to make, quick to cook, tasty, moist and portable! Get on the program my friends.
Ingredients:
Dry
150g rolled oats – (soaked overnight in a small amount of yogurt/water/milk if you wish – adjust wet ingredients accordingly)
2 scoops (abut 120g) of your favourite “Recovery Mix” – I used Kinetica’s Complete (Chocolate Flavour) this time but have used similar products from High 5 and Optimum Nutrition.
Sunflower seeds and hazelnuts (or similar) to taste
1tsp of cinnamon
Wet
1 ripe banana
150ml of Milk of choice (Cow’s, almond, hazelnut, rice etc… – not Soya, soya milk is filth!)
1 tsp of Vanilla extract
35-50 g of honey or maple syrup (Optional)
How To
Pre-Heat a fan-oven to 180c. Mix all wet ingredients together until well combined; add to dry until a nice consistent mixture is obtained. Spoon mixture out into a rectangle about 1.5cm thick on a parchment paper lined oven tray. Top with Sunflower seeds for added texture and awesomeness!
Cook for 12-15mins in the oven, just enough so its slightly browned, to long and you’ll have some dry Jacks!
Remove from oven and immediately, but gently, cut into “bars” – this mixture will make 12-15 small bars. Let cool and BOOM you’ve got yourself some PowerJacks!
Make sure to eat with water/fluids and reap the benefits! Finished product below. Store them in some Tupperware for up to 3 days!
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