As race season ends, the off-season becomes crucial for recovery, reflection, and building a solid foundation for next year’s performance. In this article, we explore essential off-season strategies for athletes, including balancing rest and activity, setting new goals, and refining nutrition. Whether you're coming off a successful season or seeking improvement, learn how to use the off-season to your advantage and set yourself up for a stronger 2025.
For athletes striving for peak performance, maintaining smooth and even power output during intervals is crucial. This holds true no matter your discipline, from roadies to MTB athletes and everyone between, the ability to sustain consistent power levels can significantly impact your performance. Power meters, with their precise data feedback, provide valuable insights to help you optimize your training. Yet, achieving smooth and even power output throughout intervals can be a challenge. Fear not! Here are six practical tips to enhance your interval training and attain greater power consistency.
As the world of sports and athletic performance continues to evolve, one essential aspect often overlooked is the distinction between training methodologies for junior athletes and their adult counterparts. The transition from adolescence to adulthood is a pivotal period in an athlete's life, marked by unique physiological, psychological, and developmental changes. These distinctions are crucial to acknowledge, comprehend, and integrate into training programs tailored explicitly for junior athletes.
The Leadville Trail 100 MTB Race is the ultimate test of endurance, resilience, and mental fortitude. Perhaps the most famous endurance mountain bike race in the world, the Leadville Trail 100 spans the rugged terrain and extreme altitudes of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. It's not merely a race, but an experience that pushes riders to their limits. For those aiming to conquer this iconic event and earn the coveted LT100 belt buckle, here are our coach’s top 10 tips that can significantly elevate your chances of success.
A while back, we posted an article What is the Off Season? Do Endurance Athletes Really Need One?. Over the years, this has been one of our most viewed blog posts by athletes all over the world. As we in the northern hemisphere start to transition into the Fall and Winter months, we thought we would whip up a new article that answers some of the questions we’ve received and that dives a bit deeper into the foundation of a cyclist’s annual training cycle.
Let’s take a look at the overall structure of your annual training plan: At WPA, we divide your year, or your Annual Training Plan, into these key phases...
Training productivity is often closely tied to your level of engagement, motivation, and how much you enjoy the training process. In the warmer months it can be easier to nourish these aspects of your training, but the cold, dark, and seemingly unending winter months often test our motivation. Check out these 5 tips to stay motivated while training this winter.
As we begin to crawl out of our climate-controlled winter pain caves and make our way outside to enjoy training and racing in the warmth of the spring sun, it’s important to remember that our bodies may need some time and attention to adjust to warmer temperatures.
Before we get into heat adaptation tips, let’s first take a look at some of the primary (negative) physiological changes that occur in the body when training or racing in a hotter environment…
The term “marginal gains” has become a prominent buzz word in cycling media over the years. Shave a couple grams here and there, increase aerodynamics by a fraction of a percentage, utilize the latest nutritional breakthroughs, all with the goal of adding up a few tiny gains to the sum of an overall noticeable increase performance. For professional athletes in the pro peloton or athletes at the highest level of their sport, chasing these gains might be worth it in the long run. For the vast majority of athletes, however, becoming a successful athlete lies in the creation and maintenance of successful habits…
After a race season devastated by COVID-19, many triathletes and roadies have flocked to the promising lure of gravel racing. With the ability to ride more socially distanced, stay away from traffic, and the added benefit of riding in some of the most beautiful locations, it’s safe to say that gravel is here to stay. More than any other year, the 2021 calendar is being filled with gravel events like The Wasatch All-Road, the iconic route of the Stupid Pony, Crusher in the Tusher, SBT GRVL, and Unbound Gravel (formerly Dirty Kanza). Distances range from 30 miles to staggering 200-300 miles…and even 300 mile tandem categories…for people who ride tandems…on gravel. With a new realm of bike racing comes the common question: “How in the world do I train for this?” This article will offer a high-level view to the chasm of information and advice surrounding the gravel scene.
As odd as it may sound, from a coaching perspective, winter is one of my favorite seasons. Athletes are typically coming off a brief window of recovery following a season of intense training and racing. The tail end of race season for many athletes is a time marked by physical and mental exhaustion, burn out, and feelings of either success or failure looking back at the season. Winter, however, is a fresh start. It’s the time of year where the successes or shortcomings of the previous season are behind us, and ahead lies the promise of new races, new results, and new opportunities.
Welcome to the 23rd Saturday of COVID-19 social distancing!! With this new norm of the “stay-at-home” order also comes an increase of free time for some; and in this new routine, exercise is rapidly becoming a sought after method of occupying our space and time. Consistency in exercise routines has long been a struggle for many.
24 HOURS, 1,440 MINUTES, 86,400 SECONDS: Those numbers make up a single day, and every one of us have to work within the confines of those limitations. So how is it that some people seem unphased by time? We have all seen those athletes that seem to balance training, work, family and everything else thrown at them with ease. The most common concerns I have heard from athletes over the years is the need…
As an athlete, I have trudged my way through many, many injuries: finger injuries, sprained ankles, broken bones, you name it… But, the injuries that were most common, and sadly the most preventable, were those due to my lack of mobility and flexibility: injuries such as hyperextensions, back issues, hip pain, and even minor muscle tweaks…All of these were due to my lack of mobility, not my lack of strength.
Often times, people assume there’s a major genetic difference between themselves and professional athletes, and in some cases this true. I have been fortunate enough to work with athletes of all caliber, from the off-the-couch amateur to world cup gold medalists and Olympic hopefuls, and from my experience, the only thing that separates a pro from a novice is the way they approach and execute their training…
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