Categories
News Top Tip Uncategorized

What is? – Conditioning…?

One word that means everything and nothing to so many, whether in the “fitness” industry or not. From rider to racer and everyone else involved “conditioning” is a word that most often in most peoples unsaid, unwritten definition overlaps with the word “fitness”.

con222

Fitness for the lay man, conditioning for the “professional”? Who cares, as it likely does not matter once solitary gram. What we mean is the ability for your body (brain included, they cannot be separated) to deliver & use adequate amounts of energy so you can successfully complete what your sport demands at any given instance. The energetics of movement maybe? Attempts to break that down into measures of ones ability to transport and use oxygen, burn substrates, use enzymes, contract, relax and control muscle, make decisions or pin point percentage substrate usage are all worthwhile uses of scientific investigation…helping further the body of knowledge coaches use and abuse in helping athlete’s prepare.

The “problem” as it stands now though is two fold and caused in no small part by many peoples perception of the above scientific investigations being the zenith of human investigation into sports performance…simply, the view held by many that scientific investigation has all the answers. As a result, depending on your sports culture, the training process can be largely dominated by percentage based systems, classifications of physiological metrics. On the surface this seems to make sense for our “conditioning” but it has in no small part contributed to blinkered views of what conditioning is and how to achieve it. To the detrement of thousands of athletes once they face the heat of true competition.

Instead of subscribing to a system created by others for the masses, the best approach, to date, in my attempts to help others achieve “fitness” and to condition athletes is to be a scavenger. While not as glamorous as a hunter metaphor, there are few scavenger species close to extinction. Basing near all decisions on a singular training model like % of FTP, % of 1 repetition max, velocity, % of V02max etc… is utter madness! What’s even worse is your foolhardy gym warrior approach of doing what’s “hot” right now – that being as I type, still, somehow, Tabata timing – 20″ of work 10″ of rest for 8 reps!

Kaos Seagrave at Redbull Hardline, UK September 2017.
PC – Red Bull Content Pool

 

If we back pedal to the start – What is conditioning? The ability to deliver, use and exceed the energy requirements of meeting your sports demands for every last second of competition, from pre-practice to race run. For the Enduro racer this is everything from track-walks, practice, race stages, post stage recovery, pre-stage prep and doing it the week after or day after if demanded by the calendar. By definition it is “fitness” – suitability for a task.

So a narrow definition of “condition” will very like get you beaten, or killed! Why? Because performance cannot be categorized by physiology alone. A solution to this problem is to become a blood-thirsty scavenger.

Take what you need from any models avaialbe, use, modify, abuse & discard. Remember that all models are wrong but many are useful. The next time your on the bike, in the gym or planning your or some other persons training you may think of this post…..with that in mind below are some conditioning buckets we try to use when planning training so as no matter how big the fire you encounter at a race you will have enough in reserve to dampen the flames, a buffer if you will, not a physiological one, but a performance buffer.

table con blog
Some of the ways we try to design training sessions to improve conditioning….am attempt to control the interaction between the many layers that make up “condition” without solely reducing them to their supposed component parts.

 

The above are just some examples – methods and means can be best guided by the application of a varied but effective and evolving ecosystems of training. The ecosystem you create by how you organise and categorize your training sessions and their desired & undesired outcomes is what allows you to build a plan that has some semblance of order that allows you to help deliver a prepared and conditioned athlete for competition. In an ideal world the above table would actually be some sort of beautiful chart where the possible relationship and connection between each approach to conditioning is explored……but I just don’t have the time or skills for that.

The above holistic approach to designing the conditioning focused elements of a plan allow for a more complete understanding of training load also. Providing a handy port of departure away from classic, linear, input//output metrics like Training Stress Score, TRIMP, distance, time etc… training load and stress can only be understood when the emotional and subsequent autonomic state that it occurred during is understood and as an extension of that the “outcome state” each session creates too. As a recent study found, perceived success or failure of a session, the emotional impact a session has and the location & result all effected rating of exertion – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29502448

Wyn Pump
PC – Red Bull Content Pool

 

The simplest measure of preparedness, conditioning and fitness will NEVER be found in a lab or quantified with numbers, being conditioned for your event/sport means meeting or exceeding demands at all moments and that requires the confidence to know you can do it for it to actually happen. So even if you have the physiological systems conditioned to deliver, use and express the use of energy as movement you are not conditioned unless that can be expressed under the global demands of competition, whether that’s a large crowd, a fresh opponent, a different air temperature or a changing surface. Conditioning = Fitness and Fitness = ability to complete a task. No caveats, no excuses.

P.S. – I’ve probably done a poor job at articulating my views on what conditioning is and how to achieve it…..but a blog is pretty much nothing more than a place one attempts to organise thoughts…..and that is all I did

Categories
Freebies News Top Tip

Prospective Control of Action

This is a re-post from the Point1 Facebook page; because frankly Facebook is a horrible medium for longer, dribbling narrative! Enjoy.

cairns_2016_when-to-set-up-high

 

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!

Greg Williamson performs at the UCI DH World Tour in Leogang on June 12, 2016

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!

Categories
Freebies News Uncategorized

The 1 Flow Warm-Up

Streamlining training success with a 1 Flow Warm-Up® ; that was the only goal with designing a smooth transition dynamic warm-up for Point1 athletes.

Below the current “1 Flow Warm-Wp®™” is demonstrated by CRC/Paypal/Nukeproof rider Joe Smith. The “moves” chosen all have purpose and intention, meaning they will not only improve your movement quality and capacity but will also lead to better application of technique on your bike as they remove unnecessary variations BUT increase usable ROM!

Use it before strength training, before DH runs or Enduro skids! Use it on it’s on for fun or regeneration. Just USE it! Consistency = Success

1 Flow – DMWU*

Start standing; relaxed. Draw in 5 big breaths. In through nose out through mouth! Fill your belly not your chest.

remember the below should flow

  • Spider-man lunge

  • T-spine rotation to free side (look up to hand)

    Hamstring Mobilise

    T-spine  rotation to support side (look up to hand)

    Deep Squat with T Spine Overhead Reach

    Squat to stand

  • Walk out on hands

  • Scapular Retraction Push Up

  • Calf Mobilise

  • A Frame Hip Extension

Cycle through the above, with no stopping for 3 to 5 reps per exercise per side; by side I mean each rep starts on a spider-man lunge on one side, cycles though all moves before you lunge to the other side.

Finish with Bear Crawls, Bounds, Jumping jacks and centre jumps to ramp up your HR and body temp!

Simple fast, fun to learn and highly effective.

 

*DMWU = Dynamic Mobility Warm Up

The video shows Joe “starting” the Flow from the Scapular retraction Push – Up

Categories
News Uncategorized

3 Mobility Moves for the Desk Bound Mountain Biker

Stuck in a chair all day? Behind the wheel or spend alot of time on the road bike? Well all of those things can cause a loss of range of motion in the hips, spine and shoulders that can lead to low back pain, shoulder aches and all around poor “movement mechanics” for mountain bikers (of any discipline).

As mountain bikers we need great thoracic spine mobility, strong but free moving hips and mobile but stable shoulders to apply strength, create speed and absorb terrain! So by adding in the following stretches/mobility moves to your daily routine, whether it’s at home in the evenings with a cup of tea, in the cubicle at work or when your out walking the dog (imagine the looks you’d get) you can start creating the movement quality needed to maximise the fun you have on your bike!

1. Crucifix Stretch

How: Stand tall, neutral spine and neck, chest high, feet shoulder width apart. Body relaxed, not tense. Hold your arms straight out at your sides, palms down thumbs forward. As you breath out external rotate the shoulders so your palms face upwards and your thumbs backwards. You should feel that “sticking point” in your deltoid muscles (upper arm), hold it here for 3 secs, repeat the process 10-20 times.

crucifix stretch start
Start Position
crucifix stretch end
End position

2. Russian Baby Maker

Sadly this one doesn’t involve a partner as the name might suggest! It’s a difficult move for some to execute as it requires a certain amount of “glute control” and hip mobility to start with but it’s a good challenge and very effective stretch, almost creating a feeling of euphoria in the auld hips after a few reps!

How: Bend at the hips by shifting them back slightly, grasp the instep of each foot and hunker down into a half squat position (thigh just parallel to floor). From there drive the knees out by progressively sliding the elbows in towards your hips. Hold the position with a flat back, for 5-12 seconds, re-set and repeat for 5-8 reps. Start with what you can. Even holding the pose for 6 secs once in the beginning is enough for some to see some benefit.

russianbabymaker-front
Russian Baby Maker Front
russianbabymaker-side
Russian Baby Maker Side

3. Thoracic Spine Overhead ReachOne of my favourite moves to help with riders cornering and general posture in the “attack position” on the bike, this move is real simple and really very effective because of it’s simplicity!

How: Once again get yourself into a deep squat position (you may need to just practice this on it’s own before progressing on). From here plant one hand firmly on the floor, elbow extended (locked out). Rotate smoothly so the other hand points skyward, all the time following the skyward hand with your eyes. The left and right side pictures should explain it all!

Overhead thoracic reach right-side
Overhead thoracic reach right-side
Overhead thoracic reach left-side
Overhead thoracic reach left-side