Whether you’re building up to your first ever race, or you’ve a season or two under your belt, here’s 4 tips that’ll help you improve your performance and avoid the frustration of injury:
Cutting Edge Tip #1: Technique Problems Are Not Your Fault
Bodies move the way they do for a reason. Muscle tightness is the cause of all technique problems so unless you find the tightness and fix it, no amount of high knee drills or high elbows will help your performance in the long run. Your technique might look better for a while, but you’ll end up injured eventually as the drills just tire out muscles that are already fatigued.
Cutting Edge Tip #2: Injuries don’t just happen overnight
Unless you’ve been knocked off your bike, or suffered some other major trauma, your injuries can be traced back to muscle tightness. Tightness is created by repetition and will build gradually over time, often months or even years before you get any symptoms.
Cutting Edge Tip #3: To go fast you must go slow
If you always train hard, your brain will have no recognition of how to go faster. Going slow may seem frustrating but you’re actually teaching your brain how to go through the gears. Once it knows the difference between fast and slow, you’ll find you top end speed improves.
Cutting Edge Tip #4: There are intensities of rest too
Nature is always looking for balance and training should be no different. If you train hard, work hard and party hard, your body has no way of keeping the balance. Your rest needs to be exactly opposite to the training intensity to allow your body to recover properly, find the balance and be ready to push hard again. If you’ve had a particularly tough day at work, maybe do a gentler training session to feel active but refreshed.
Nature has all sorts of sneaky performance tricks that are hiding in plain sight. To take advantage of them in a simple and fun warm-up routine, grab my FREE Warm Up Wiggle Video and see what difference it makes to your next training session.