Category
Tips and Advice
Guides and advice on bikes and training.
Video: Spur Sizzling Skill – Starting fast
South African Cross-country Mountain Bike Champion James Reid has spent years honing his mass-starting technique. Here he shows you how to make sure you’re the first rider into the singletrack.
Video: Spur Sizzling Skillz – Hopping Pavements
Mountain biking about dealing with whatever the trail throws at you. Successfully getting you and your bike up and over rocks, steps and bumps is an important skill to master. Watch Ariane Kleinhans from Team Spur show you the simple approach to getting over an obstacle, so you can practice on a pavement at home.
Spur Sizzling Skillz – Conquering Climbs
Ariane Kleinhans is known for her climbing powers, and while her incredible fitness gets her to the top quickly, it’s her strong technique that provides the greatest advantage. Let the Swiss Marathon Champion show you how to speed up hills!
Training with a power meter: the ins and outs
Cycling is a fairly unique sport due to the ability to be able to get a direct measure of workload. Power meters have been around for a few decades already and are able to measure your power output in real time during training and racing. Immediately after the power meters were first released to the […]
Introducing Spur Sizzling Skillz video series
Ariane Kleinhans and James Reid are helping Spur Schools Mountain Bike League participants sharpen their bike skills. While the Team Spur duo are busy preparing for the Marathon and Cross-country World Champs in Europe, they are also hoping a series of videos they release this week will inspire the next generation of mountain biking superstars […]
First Look: Today’s Plan online training program
Today’s Plan is an Australian software startup which seeks to bring the knowledge of a qualified coach to an affordable, cloud-based training and coaching subscription service in the form of training programs. Today’s Plan dashboard. Training calendar. Although not the first in this arena, Today’s Plan offers a range of unique features promising to take […]
Why should you train with a heart rate monitor?
To reach your fitness goals and maintain them, you need to train smarter, not harder and this can be achieved by understanding your heart. Your “maximum heart rate” is the maximum number of times your heart beats in one minute. To calculate an average reading of your max heart rate, take the number 220 for […]
Report: Biking in the Bosch mountain bike camp
Anyone who has participated in any form of mountain biking event recently will have noticed that basic bike handling skills seem to have been neglected by a large proportion of South African riders. In an attempt to avoid being one of the many that screech to a halt at the first sign of a rock, […]
Triathletes: Manipulating your session order could improve your recovery
In our article last week, we spoke about the proposed benefit of compression garments to enhance recovery following an intense cycling test. We are sticking to the recovery theme this week, but we are changing exercise modes and athletes. Triathletes are challenged to improve their performances in three different exercise modes. In order to achieve […]
Joe Friel Workshop at SSISA: All you need to know about power & heart-rate based training
The Sports Science Institute of South Africa (SSISA) together with my Training Day Triathlon Academy, PowerTap, CycleOps and Bicycling magazine, is proud to present an evening workshop with world -acclaimed coach Joe Friel & exercise physiologist at SSISA, Dr Ben Capastagno. Joe Friel is perhaps the most recognizable name among triathlon and cycling coaches in […]
Do compression garments enhance recovery for cyclists?
On Monday night, the Discovery High Performance Centre of the Sports Science Institute of South Africa held a workshop on “Recovery strategies to enhance performance”. One of the techniques discussed was the use of lower-leg compression garments to speed up recovery. In this week’s article we will dissect the findings of a recently published study, […]
The Taper: The ‘forgotten’ phase of training
Tapering is a training strategy that allows endurance athletes to achieve peak performance for major competitions. Manipulating both the volume and the intensity of the training during the taper allows the athletes to flush out any fatigue without losing training induced adaptations. There are an infinite number of methods used to structure tapers. In addition, […]