I need a coach

Shavedlegs

I was thinking of getting a coach. Not sure I'll bother now.

I'll just keep to riding as hard as possible as often as possible.

Jaffer(acc)

Toks, do you spend all your free time on cycling websites and forums?

George wants a coach...you could just read a few books (refreshing change from watching DVDs?). Thats what I used to do, till I developed into a typical teenager.

Tom Butcher

I think Mike makes a valid point about naming names. If you say you coach world class cyclists then the obvious questions are who and how much input did you have in their coaching. To my knowledge athletes don't commonly try and maintain confidentiality about who their coach is.

Toks

Jaffer(acc) wrote:

Toks, do you spend all your free time on cycling websites and forums?

George wants a coach...you could just read a few books (refreshing change from watching DVDs?). Thats what I used to do, till I developed into a typical teenager.

Mo, books quite naturally tend to be quite general in they're advice. A professional coach will I'm sure help you design a program built around your goals, weaknesses, strength, personality etc

Tom Butcher wrote:

To my knowledge athletes don't commonly try and maintain confidentiality about who their coach is.

When was the last time you read about a successful cyclist attributing their success to a named coach. Yet I bet most successful cyclists at elite level have them

Mike Willcox1

I think you have to turn it on it's head.

When you have the name of a coach mentioned thern their credibility is governed by who they work or have worked with.

When you mention a rider their credibility is their CV/palmares.

Tom Butcher

Toks wrote:

Tom Butcher wrote:

To my knowledge athletes don't commonly try and maintain confidentiality about who their coach is.

When was the last time you read about a successful cyclist attributing their success to a named coach. Yet I bet most successful cyclists at elite level have them

I disagree - it's not uncommon for athletes to talk about their coaches and vice versa. If claims to work with top level cyclists aren't backed up then they are meaningless. Similarly claims to have published peer reviewed research is only meaningful if we know the journal, whether they were a lead author and whether it was a full article or just some kind of abstract. I'm not saying that coaches need to have been main coaches to pro athletes or that they need to have a list of publications to be good coaches - but if people are going to throw these claims about to add weight to their arguments then they should be able and willing to substantiate them.

Ric_Stern/RST

simply, for me there is athlete confidentiality as it relates to some of the Div1 riders i've worked with. That is, in some cases either the team or the rider has requested confidentiality.

In terms of peer reviewed research, you can do a Pub-Med search to find my full paper

ric

Toks

Tom Butcher wrote:

[I disagree - it's not uncommon for athletes to talk about their coaches and vice versa

:? er...I've read heaps of articles on Miller, Cavendish, Wiggins, Evans, Leipheimer,Thomas, Contador,Macintryre,Zabriskie, Newton, Dawson, Reade, Pederson, Hammond, Pozzato, Boonen, Petachi, Bettini,Cooke, Downing, Backstead (actually he once mentioned his coach by name), Wegelius,Gerdemann, Rasmussen,Vocler, Kennaugh, Schlecck bro's, Wilkinson, Heal, Wyman, Hutch, Houvanenagel, and loads of other international and domestic pro's. Now I'm sure the vast majority have coaches. I don't know who their coaches are, do you? No of course you dont. Why? because its very rare to hear a rider mention their coach by name even in very indepth comprehensive articles

DaveyL

Probably because in many (but not all) cases their coaches are also shady doctors who are doing a bit more than analysing their SRM data and giving them training plans....

chrisw12

Daveyl; spot on.

Perhaps that's Rics problem, he's been looking at the wrong type of science books and listening to the wrong type of doctors.