FITNESS: Top Coaching Sessions from Top Coaches

Photos: Piper Albrecht, Matt Rousu

For the past few years, I’ve been lucky enough to discuss (what I think) are exciting training concepts, hopefully allowing the readership of the magazine some food for thought and ideas about how to increase their fitness for more fun when mountain biking. You’ve heard all about some of my favourite sessions, planning a season, even how to implement some heat adaption into your training. While I’ve tried hard to ensure there are variety of voices within this column, including professional and elite athletes, physiotherapists and strength and conditioning coaches, I haven’t as yet engaged my peers within the coaching space to to AMB’s fitness column.

All the coaches featured in this edition’s article are predominantly mountain bike specific coaches, and while their goals will broadly be the same for all their athletes—identify the requirements of the sport, the abilities of the athlete and work towards physical and mental improvement—there are many different approaches that can yield successful results. One approach may be a great fit for one athlete, and not at all useful for another. 

As such, I’ve asked some of the most active coaches in Oceania what their favourite session is for athletes and why. Hopefully you’ll gain a few more sneaky sessions to work into your training week, and explore a few different training approaches and thoughts from someone other than myself. While it’s pretty common for athletes to talk about their training on social media (former pro-now-dentist Annika Langvad is a great follow and regularly discusses her training when she was at the top level!), by speaking to coaches we get to talk to people who deal with a large range of athletes through multiple training cycles, who can assess the data and see what’s working and infer why.

Donna Dall

pcscoaching.com.au

Donna is a long-time coach of elite and aspiring mountain bikers in Australia. This session looks at the demands of high torque pedaling interspersed with short neuromuscular efforts, making for an incredibly challenging session! As Donna mentions, this session is started after general preparation and aerobic base work phases have been completed, constituting a priority session as an athlete builds towards their goal races. 

'A staple session within my armoury is what I call the SE5x5 Sprints session. These 5-minute Strength Endurance (SE) intervals are “interrupted” with short 15 second all out max bursts. The intervals are completed on a road climb or fireroad climb if you’re on the dirt. The gradient doesn’t need to be too steep and ideally only 5-10%.'

The session: 

• 20min warm up – easy recovery pace on flat terrain.
  • At the 10min mark, perform 3 x 15 second activation warm up sprints (1 min recovery between sprints)
• 5-minute SE Interval
  • 45secs SE (seated climbing at 60-70RPM)
  • 15secs jump out of the saddle and do an all-out max burst sprint
  • Repeat the above 4 more times.
• 5minutes at recovery pace by rolling back down the hill.
• Repeat the 5-minute SE Interval 4 more times.
• 20-minute warm down – easy recovery pace on flat terrain

'I use this session at the very end of the General Preparation phase and the beginning of the Specific Preparation phase for preparing XCO athletes for their upcoming race season. The first time you do this session it will hurt (if done correctly) and by the second and third attempts the body will be starting to adapt. Then you know it’s time to pivot!'

Dr Matt Miller

mtbphd.com

Dr Matt Miller is a dedicated mountain bike coach, working with a range of athletes from XCO to Gravity Enduro, and has spent his life finding ways to make mountain bike athletes faster using technology and gold-standard sports science approach to tackling athlete physiology. Matt shares one of his favourite sessions for making a rider more efficient on the trail in order to save energy for when it counts!

‘My favourite training session isn’t an interval session at all, it’s pacing practice! Yes, you need to train hard [sometimes], but most riders can improve their riding by leaps and bounds simply by working smarter instead of harder. To try this, head out to your local lap (XC or Enduro/DH) and smash an all-out race effort. Record your power, heart rate and run or lap time. Recover completely for 30 minutes, grab a snack, then smash out a lap at 90% pedaling effort. On your 90% lap, focus on finding flow, braking to carry speed, and optimizing your pedaling efforts as if you were a tiny little human engine on a bicycle with a finite ability (since that’s what we are!). Compare your stats to your all-out run. You may not always be faster on your 90% lap, but this session will show you that all-out all the time is not the way to get the most from yourself. The real trick is to try this at your next group ride or race – and that means being more calculated about your effort for the first 1 minute. But this takes a lot of confidence and is easier said than done.

Adam Kelsall

HeroDirt Coaching

Adam or ‘Adz’ from Herodirt coaching has committed his life to helping mountain bike athletes be their best, and over the years his athletes have developed alongside him, with some Commonwealth Games bling and multiple World Cup top ten’s, plus numerous national champions to his name. Here Adz tells us about one of his favourite workouts, which is widely used by many coaches, the 2×20, and what he intends to build when prescribing it for his athletes.

'My favourite session to prescribe is 2 x 20min at FTP with 10mins easy between. It’s probably my athletes least favourite and lots of races pop up that they want to do instead of the 2 x 20 once they see it on their plan. 

It’s a benchmark set. It lets me know if the physiology we’ve been building for racing is in place or still needs a bit of tweaking. If they can get through it then it’s a good sign psychologically they are tough, and the aerobic system and lactate shuttle are working pretty efficiently for a good length of time that relates well to the length of the aerobic demands of XCO racing. 

To give more context I’ll typically do this 2 x 20 min benchmark set 5 weeks out from an “A” race. Then they do 3 weeks of two a week VO2 efforts in a race specific format that sharpens up the anaerobic system for race starts and steep pinches as well as preparing biomechanically for the torque demands of racing. These also imbed metabolic flexibility which is important in physiological resilience against the stochastic demands of XCO racing. Much longer than 3 weeks of VO2 and athletes get very fatigued and after the 2 x 20 set then three weeks of VO2s they are swearing at coach most sessions. But then two weeks of taper and they get happy again because they’re flying on race day. Ultimately that’s my goal that their big race days are their best days.