NEWS
The 3 Legged Stool
Written by Russell
Wednesday, 28 January 2009 13:44
My coaching philosophy has always used a holistic approach. Yes, "holistic" is a bit trite these days, but it's true. We have to look at the whole picture. We have to look at all the variables. But that gets confusing because there are so many variables that affect your performance in the sport of cycling. How do we keep them all straight? How can we categorize the variables? This is why I use the 3 legged stool analogy. I can't take full credit for this, however, because this concept was brought to me by Richard McClung who randomly said many years ago. Richard is so smart with cycling and drops these tidbits of wisdom all day. He summarized this by saying the rider who performs to their potential is physically strong, mentally strong, and stays healthy. BAM! There it is, folks. Physical strength, mental strength, and health. That's what you need to do your best. And a shout out to Hunter Allen who recently posted his version of this philosophy. Similar to my thoughts, but I place more importance on health. I like mine better. No offense, Hunter!
Physical strength refers to training and recovery. This variable gets the most attention. This includes everything you do to stress your body: volume and intensity of cycling, cross-training, resistance training, respiratory training, and quality of recovery. The athlete must maintain a proper balance of overload and recovery for optimal gains.
Mental capacity is equally important, especially in road cycling. As I have said before, road cycling uses the tactics of poker or chess with the physical demands of running a marathon. During the event, the rider must be acutely aware of tactics and make good decisions. Mental skills are also needed for communication with teammates, team directors, family, co-workers, and other facets of life. If you cannot balance training and competition with your career and family, this will affect your performance. If you forget your shoes on race day, this affects your performance. This also includes the mental capacity to stay motivated and disciplined for training.
Health is the third leg on the stool of success. The factors affecting health are nutrition, training stress balance, and most importantly, recovery. It also includes injuries, or the ability to not get injured. This is paramount. Training effectively for weeks and months could all be for nothing, if you get sick or injured. To reach your ultimate success, you must be able to train without major setbacks. To recover from training stress and overcompensate to gain strength, you must have optimal health. This is often overlooked by endurance athletes. Don't assume you are healthy because you exercise 10-20 hours per week. Take this as seriously as you do your training.
Using this 3 legged stool analogy for cycling performance, you can categorically divide the components to successful performance. All are important and without any one leg, the stool will fall, much like your performance will fail. Keep this in mind as you continue your training this season. Best of luck.