The very first of our series of 4 training workshops, in preparation of the upcoming Spring/ Summer race calendar, was held on Monday evening – and boy what a workout – both mental and physical – it was! Click here to download the workshop content slides here; and read on to find out how it went and watch a short clip of the riders in action…
Head Coach Dave’s Perspective:
“I don’t usually arrive at the circuit to find people waiting for me, but this Monday was a real surprise. Almost everyone who had signed up for the Monday sessions was outside, begging to be let in to get the workshop started. Admin was kept to a minimum, with riders securing their space, setting up their turbos for the latter part of the session.
The classroom session was “Components of Fitness”, looking at the various physiological systems and how they combine and can be trained to help a rider reach their true potential.
Slipstreamers planning their Turbo workouts!
As coaches, these sessions are a great opportunity to discover how well riders understand the demands of cycling, and how to prepare. As always with Slipstreamers, we are pleasantly surprised. Information is obviously flowing between riders and their coaches, club mates, siblings and of course external sources such as the internet, books and magazines. All in all, the attendees demonstrated a rounded understanding of how and why we train – very encouraging to see such young riders using the words “aerobic”, “anaerobic” and “lactate” in open conversation. Through discussion and feedback, it’s safe to say we all came away knowing more than we did before.
The next part of the session had riders working in groups to plan a series of Turbo Sessions for different disciplines, applying what they had learned about Components of Fitness. And although they had limited time to prepare something, all managed to produce solid 20 minute workout plans in the allotted time.
Then it was into the main hall to execute the workouts.
Group 1 (Ollie, Seth, Abby and Kye) had their plan carried out first. As with all training, we facilitated a 20 minute warm up, followed by the Group 1’s “Sprint Workout”. To say the workout was tough is an understatement – the chatting subsided to be replaced by the roar of tyres on turbos. Plenty of red faces and sweaty heads later, and in the interest of safety, we had to cut some of the intervals short so that we could fit in the warm-down and stretching routine. The session had most of the coaching staff quaking in their shoes at the intensity required!
We crammed so much into just under 2 hours, and I certainly went home pleased that it had been a great success. We have more spaces available for next Monday’s session which looks at “Planning a Season” before carrying out Group 2’s turbo session.”
But what did the kids think?!
Working those legs!
Here’s what Ollie Emment had to say…
“The Monday workshops are great fun but hard. We got put into groups of 4 or 5, I was with Kye, Abbey and Seth, we did some classroom work and created our own Turbo session, ours was for a Track sprinter and we did ours 1st. It was easy to create it but really hard to do it. I can’t wait for next week, you should come and join in, it is fun but hard work!”
And Ben Bisson’s thoughts?
“On Monday night I went to my first evening coaching and turbo session at Hillingdon. It was very exciting going to Hillingdon at night. We listened to Dave tell us about anaerobic and aerobic exercise and we planned a turbo session. We then warmed up on the turbo before riding a turbo session made up by a group from the classroom. I enjoyed my session and look forward to next weeks.”
Well done everyone! Session 2 is on Monday the 9th March – details here.