As an athlete, you know you dread it: Deep into a training cycle a workout shows up in your plan that you fear you’re probably not going to finish. And you don’t finish. You’ll annotate the file or note in …
Category: Mental Skills
How to Use Visualization and Biofeedback to Enhance Cycling Performance
What if we enhanced our efforts by visualizing how we want our bodies to move and perform? I don’t mean just picturing yourself lifting a goal weight, but mentally practicing the form you want?
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry
Living and riding in the Pacific Northwest wet winter weather, my family sets up trainers in the sun room to start indoor spin season. I catch up on watching race coverage while turning the cranks. While watching professional road races, I …
Even With Motivation, Unconscious Anxiety Blocks Improvement of Habits
All living things are driven to avoid pain. Unconscious systems compel them to select – without awareness – choices that have become familiar and proven safe. Human beings are no exception. They are motivated to avoid pain, including psychological pain, …
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Poker Face at Threshold
It’s certainly not necessary to be playing high-stakes at the card table to benefit from a poker face. The ability to mask one’s reactions from the competition is useful outside of gambling – in sport. We often hear about athletes …
Is Your Relationship with Food Undermining Your Athletic Goals?
Relationships with food are complex, particularly for athletes. Adequate and ideal nutrition for health, appearance, and performance can suffer when the focus primarily is on reaching a fixed “ideal” body weight. While a high power-to-weight ratio is essential for success …
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How to Support an Athlete Who May Be Vulnerable to an Eating Disorder
As coaches and friends of endurance athlete, we need to be aware of the ways in which discussions of weight-optimization can trigger eating disorders in vulnerable individuals. Weight loss can lead to improved performance in some athletes in some disciplines, …
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Identifying Perceived Effort: Choosing the Right Words & Thoughts to Improve Performance
How you talk to yourself about your training and racing performance, especially with regard to exercise intensity, matters more than you might think. There’s a number for everything these days: ride time, cadence, distance, heart rate, power, you name it. …
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Going the Extra Mile: The Costs and Benefits of Supplemental Training
Racing, especially stage racing, favors those willing to train long and hard and to suffer intensely, so serious bike racers exercise in ways that sound crazy to non-racers. Occasionally, some racers train to such an extent that even us cyclists …
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How Was Your Ride? The Importance of Attitude to Recovery and Success
Effective recovery only happens if you relax. Without recovery, training gains are minimal, and you can even weaken despite working hard. The blissful rush felt when sitting calmly after hard training corresponds to a hormonal shift from work mode to …
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What Are You Really Trying to Do? Prioritize Performance
Mike races bikes. He has been getting faster on all sorts of terrain and has become competitive on flats and descents, but not on climbs. A photo of Mike shows beautiful mountains behind a rider cornering aggressively on a long …
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See You Next Year? Knowing When to Stop Racing
The end of the road-racing season has arrived. Even the most serious roadies are relaxing, having the annual beer, and taking a few easy weeks before resuming training. In the coming months, they will connect with teams and coaches as …
Discipline: Good and Bad Habits and Why We Mess Up
It’s 9 p.m. on Friday. Mary got home from a long workweek several hours ago, had a quick dinner and showered. She’s ready for bed. She’s also excited about a club ride she’ll be attending for the first time early …
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Total Preparation: Fitness is Not Enough
What does it mean to prepare as well as possible for a big race? You’ll want to develop your physical abilities such as aerobic and anaerobic endurance along with sprint speed to peak for the event. That means accumulating many …
The Big Picture: Today’s Performance Reflects Years of Diet and Training
In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.- Johann Wolfgang von Goeth Several years ago, the training blogosphere was atwitter with posts from …
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