The No Sweat way to Improve your Racing

Two issues that impact training and racing are practicing “incorrectly” and time management. This article is going to address both of those in the course of encouraging racers to work on pack handling skills.

In one hour, without breaking a sweat the awareness and the drills included in this article can increase your confidence, reduce your anxiety and allow that mis-directed energy to be applied to more proactive work in the race.

To all racers, the most important goal of any race is getting from the start to the finish line upright. If you don’t have the necessary pack skills, that may be a difficult thing to do. Also, if you don’t have those skills, you will be working harder to create the necessary power — diverting precious energy through nervousness, over-reaction to irrelevant information, and anxiety.

By learning and/or improving your pack skills, you can become a less anxious, more proactive, calmer, more attendant, more efficient racer. The first step in addressing a problem awareness.

Quick test:

Do you turn equally well in races in left-hand and right-hand turns?

Do you use both hands equally well for finding, drinking, and returning your water bottle to the cage, without dropping your eyes to find either the bottle or the cage?

If you said no to either of the above, continue on:

Do you get on the same side of the bike every time, using the same leg/arm orientation?

Do you dismount your bike the same way every time?

At a stop, do you unclip the same foot every time?

If you said yes to all of the above, then you have a well-facilitated coordination pattern in that movement while cycling. That would imply that you have a less well-facilitated coordination in other movements, because of what I will call a habituated movement pattern.

The greatest influence to skilled movement acquisition and use is practice. Many of you have been practicing for years with this one movement. What has occurred is that cortically, cerebellarly, spinally, neuro-muscularly, you have created a well-learned, well-coordinated, strongly imprinted and structurally supported movement – what I call a stereotyped and automatic movement.

So, if a dangerous occurrence happens where you can use the “good” coordination, you will be fine. However, if it happens where we don’t have any coordination, you may not be fine. This where I would say you are practicing “incorrectly.”

Practice is meant to include all the demands of your sport or movement. In most of the cyclists that I see, we have assumed that we are symmetrically coordinated. This is a mis-perception.

The next time you go out for a ride, try this. Instead of mounting your bike the usual way – a way that you don’t even have to think about. Go to the other side of the bike than the usual side.

• Does that feel odd?

• Do you have to think about where your hands go?

• Do you have to think about which leg goes where?

Now, swing your leg over your bike the way that you would normally get on your bike to ride, and just stand over the bike from that “new” side.

• Did that feel odd?

If the answer to the above questions is yes, then you are now aware that you have a well-educated side and a less well-educated side.

This shows that within what you considered a symmetrically coordinated body, there are patterns that have not even been investigated, thought of, used, and/or practiced. You have many models of coordination that have not been set up because of the habituation you have developed riding and practicing the same things over thousands of miles.

What then can occur, in those unpredictable times in a race, is that you have no coordination patterns to avoid and/or defend against events that demand use from all those other unidentified and uneducated patterns.

So, before practicing pack skills, let’s address your facility to meet ALL the demands of pack racing.

The good news is that within an hour can you begin to change and change the way that your body automatically can perform. This is where practicing “correctly” or with all of the demands of racing included comes into play.

• Learning different ways to mount and dismount your bike

• Learning to use the other foot to unclip

• Clipping into your pedals using the other leg, without looking at your pedals

• Starting to ride with the less dominant leg

• Slow riding

• Track stands, standing and seated, with either leg in the front position

• Slow figure 8’s around small diameter circles

• Water bottle pick up & put down’s

• Oppositional riding in a circle with a fixed visual focus

I do run this course which can be much more specific and individualize. Also, I would be a better monitor of your practice, since much of your attention will be on larger movement goals. I would be able to see the smaller issues that may impact on your practicing with a better form. Please get in touch regarding schedule. Once you have accomplished these cortical-cerebellar-spinal-neuro-muscular drills, you will be prepared to advance to “so called” functional exercsises.

• Bunny hopping (object avoidance without changing your line)

• The 3 versions of turning – leaning, steering, counter-steering

• Bumping

• Wheel touching

Hope to see you out there.

Scot Willingham is a USAC Elite level cycling coach, a Strength and Conditioning coach and is certified by ACSM. He has been working as a coach and a fitness provider for over 20 years in NYC. He works primarily with people that have come out of injury and/or surgery emphasizing Neuro-Muscular Re-Education. This is the ability to identify movement issues, re-training and re-conditioning people to new structure or movement patterns that will better facilitate their activity and/or sport. He is also finishing a Masters in Motor Learning at Teachers College, Columbia University which studies how humans acquire movement skills and is used primarily in Physical and Occupational Therapy, Sports Coaching, and Physical Education.