jimmybikes
03-25-2004, 06:51 PM
I wanted to lay down some general training guidelines that hopefully will help riders of all levels, by giving them some general principles to build a training schedule around.
It is important to realize that trials although different from any other sports still has principles that are true of all sports, if you understand these principles they can be applied to trials or any sport.
One thing to point out at the very beginning is the importance of motor skills and how they relate to sports. Your ability to learn the actual skills involved in what ever your sport is, will in most cases have more of an impact on your performance than any other factor. This may sound obviously true to most of you, but you would not believe how many athletes miss this fact. This fact is the most important aspect when it comes to designing a training program.
Basically this means, if you want to be good at any sport, the thing that will help you the most is actually doing the moves you want to be good at! In other words, nothing improves your ability to do a sport more than actually practicing that sport! So if you have a limited amount of time and you can only do one thing, practice riding…practice riding…practice riding! Nothing will improve you trials riding more than this one thing.
However, when deciding how much to ride it is important to do the amount of riding that will help you the most. At different times this will change, but there is a guideline to follow. And that guideline is to stop riding when you first start feeling tired. If you keep trying after you are tired, you are not only wasting your time, but you can actually teach your body to “unlearn” the correct way of doing the skill. Not only does this send the wrong message to your muscles, but also once you are tired, you run a greater risk of injury. I have seen a lot of athletes get hurt for no other reason than they were just to tired and they didn’t stop. Too many coaches press athletes to buckle down and keep going even when they are too tired. You can decide, do you want to train smart or do you just want to plod along no matter what, does quantity make up for a lack of quality??? For Pro level riders this means no more than two hard days a week, although they can ride every day if they want to, in most cases time off the bike will help them more than riding every day.
Just remember practice within your limits, hurt riders do not make good progress.
At some point in any sport you will find you have reached some limit physically. At this point one or more of the following will be important to you, a strength building program, cardio building activity or some type of flexibility training may be very helpful to supplement your riding. It is important to point out that most riders are not at this level. Sure being in better shape will help any one to be a better rider no matter what level they are at, but it is more often true that a higher skilled person in poor shape will beat athletes that are in much better shape.
Most people doing trials are in good enough shape to do the moves that are required to be at least an expert level rider. In other words they are not experts because they lack the skills, not because they are not strong enough, or don’t have a good enough cardiovascular fitness, or because they are not flexible enough. However, if you do find one of these areas limiting your ability to ride, supplement your riding by doing what ever you need to work on, but make sure it is supplementing your riding, not becoming the center of your focus.
At some point and for most people, it is somewhere between the expert level and the pro level riders will start to notice that they need work on some fitness aspect in order to achieve better results.
At that point the best thing to do is to find your weakness and find the safest and most effective way to improve that weakness. My experience shows that that means a strength building program that takes you less than 30 minutes ever week to start with and after a month or two it should take you less than 30 minutes ever two weeks. For cardiovascular fitness than means a program that you can do either 2 or 3 times a week and it should take you less than 15 minutes to complete. And for flexibility it would involve a program that you can do in about 5-10 minutes any where from 3-6 days a week depending on your desire.
So, a expert or pro rider doing all of this would be able to do everything in between one hour and two hours every two weeks. In other words, a very small amount of time is spent doing this, because if done right it only takes a small amount of time, and even at the pro level most of the time you get beat because the riders had better skills not because the riders had better fitness.
Some other guidelines; the better you get, the less you will need to ride, and in fact too much time riding hurts more pro riders than not riding enough does.
The reason is, as you get closer to your genetic potential, you are stressing your body, by pushing it to the limits. So you get tired quicker and it takes longer to recover. Many pro riders make the mistake of keeping their riding time the same as it always was, this leads to over training…the first signs of over training are a lack of desire to go riding, and always being slightly tired. Their performance levels will become very erratic; some times they will have a good day and then several very bad days.
If you train less, but more intense you have many more very good days and very few bad days…it is on those very good days that you can practice at levels that are impossible to practice at, if you are tired and riding to often.
I hope some of you find these general principles helpful.
Jim VanSchoonhoven
It is important to realize that trials although different from any other sports still has principles that are true of all sports, if you understand these principles they can be applied to trials or any sport.
One thing to point out at the very beginning is the importance of motor skills and how they relate to sports. Your ability to learn the actual skills involved in what ever your sport is, will in most cases have more of an impact on your performance than any other factor. This may sound obviously true to most of you, but you would not believe how many athletes miss this fact. This fact is the most important aspect when it comes to designing a training program.
Basically this means, if you want to be good at any sport, the thing that will help you the most is actually doing the moves you want to be good at! In other words, nothing improves your ability to do a sport more than actually practicing that sport! So if you have a limited amount of time and you can only do one thing, practice riding…practice riding…practice riding! Nothing will improve you trials riding more than this one thing.
However, when deciding how much to ride it is important to do the amount of riding that will help you the most. At different times this will change, but there is a guideline to follow. And that guideline is to stop riding when you first start feeling tired. If you keep trying after you are tired, you are not only wasting your time, but you can actually teach your body to “unlearn” the correct way of doing the skill. Not only does this send the wrong message to your muscles, but also once you are tired, you run a greater risk of injury. I have seen a lot of athletes get hurt for no other reason than they were just to tired and they didn’t stop. Too many coaches press athletes to buckle down and keep going even when they are too tired. You can decide, do you want to train smart or do you just want to plod along no matter what, does quantity make up for a lack of quality??? For Pro level riders this means no more than two hard days a week, although they can ride every day if they want to, in most cases time off the bike will help them more than riding every day.
Just remember practice within your limits, hurt riders do not make good progress.
At some point in any sport you will find you have reached some limit physically. At this point one or more of the following will be important to you, a strength building program, cardio building activity or some type of flexibility training may be very helpful to supplement your riding. It is important to point out that most riders are not at this level. Sure being in better shape will help any one to be a better rider no matter what level they are at, but it is more often true that a higher skilled person in poor shape will beat athletes that are in much better shape.
Most people doing trials are in good enough shape to do the moves that are required to be at least an expert level rider. In other words they are not experts because they lack the skills, not because they are not strong enough, or don’t have a good enough cardiovascular fitness, or because they are not flexible enough. However, if you do find one of these areas limiting your ability to ride, supplement your riding by doing what ever you need to work on, but make sure it is supplementing your riding, not becoming the center of your focus.
At some point and for most people, it is somewhere between the expert level and the pro level riders will start to notice that they need work on some fitness aspect in order to achieve better results.
At that point the best thing to do is to find your weakness and find the safest and most effective way to improve that weakness. My experience shows that that means a strength building program that takes you less than 30 minutes ever week to start with and after a month or two it should take you less than 30 minutes ever two weeks. For cardiovascular fitness than means a program that you can do either 2 or 3 times a week and it should take you less than 15 minutes to complete. And for flexibility it would involve a program that you can do in about 5-10 minutes any where from 3-6 days a week depending on your desire.
So, a expert or pro rider doing all of this would be able to do everything in between one hour and two hours every two weeks. In other words, a very small amount of time is spent doing this, because if done right it only takes a small amount of time, and even at the pro level most of the time you get beat because the riders had better skills not because the riders had better fitness.
Some other guidelines; the better you get, the less you will need to ride, and in fact too much time riding hurts more pro riders than not riding enough does.
The reason is, as you get closer to your genetic potential, you are stressing your body, by pushing it to the limits. So you get tired quicker and it takes longer to recover. Many pro riders make the mistake of keeping their riding time the same as it always was, this leads to over training…the first signs of over training are a lack of desire to go riding, and always being slightly tired. Their performance levels will become very erratic; some times they will have a good day and then several very bad days.
If you train less, but more intense you have many more very good days and very few bad days…it is on those very good days that you can practice at levels that are impossible to practice at, if you are tired and riding to often.
I hope some of you find these general principles helpful.
Jim VanSchoonhoven