Training for 13 year old

swaman

My son has shown an interest in racing and I have had him out for a few steady runs. Cant find out any info on what sort of quantity / quality training a 13 / 14 year old should be doing. Anyone got sensible suggestions or links to where I can get some information to help me plan what he should be doing.

Maybe someone that has already been through this with his / her son / daughter could share their experience of the type of training and how they managed it with their own training ( i dont think I would let him out on the roads yet on his own )

thanks

Percy Vera

I wouldn't imagine it would be anything too specific at that age.
Might be worth having a look on the BC site in the go-ride section or contact your local club if they do go-ride

CarleyB

some areas have youth riding clubs. i know we have one here in Blackpool, they teach them up to age 14.

google youth cycle clubs.. brings up a few.

sheffsimon

swaman wrote:

My son has shown an interest in racing and I have had him out for a few steady runs. Cant find out any info on what sort of quantity / quality training a 13 / 14 year old should be doing. Anyone got sensible suggestions or links to where I can get some information to help me plan what he should be doing.

Maybe someone that has already been through this with his / her son / daughter could share their experience of the type of training and how they managed it with their own training ( i dont think I would let him out on the roads yet on his own )

thanks

There's your answer, take him out with you, give a him a battering on the bike, he will be totally dispirited, loose interest and save you a fortune in the long term - money you spend on his bike is money you cant spend on yours

Seriously speaking, I think I was doing club runs and some club 10's in the summer, and cyclo-cross in the winter at 14/15. Never did specific road training and I dont think I should have either. I think it was all about building up a base of fitness/strength, although never thought of it that way at the time, and just enjoying riding the bike.

Going back to the cyclo-cross though, I throughly enjoyed racing cross as a kid, you can do your training off-road, and its a branch of the sport that has a fun element to it. Plus its training/racing that stands you in good stead for juvenile level racing on the road - circuits/crits.

ireland57

I've been riding and training for two years with my 14yo lad.

What I've found:-

Keep it fun.

Ride with friends. If you have riding friends he likes go with them.

Sometimes he'll enjoy rides with you, sometimes not.

Start with a structure that makes it look and behave completely unstructured.

Don't lecture him (You're a Dad; you know you do it) - unless it's safety [then don't hold back].

I pull back my own training to fit him in.

It works wonders with homework.

Make some of the rides hard (maybe a little too hard); this one is a very tough line to find without crossing it.

We've had some spats.

We do intervals (tiny bit), hills (weekly), faster paced rides anywhere.
He chooses 95% of our rides and races. More fun that way and he's happy before we start.

He thanked me on the weekend for making him a "pro-rider" (meaning he went very well).

He smashed me in a 2 hr race on the weekend. Bigtime.

Now I have to train sneakily to try to catch him.

Bhima

I know a parent who's just bought this book. It's not arrived yet, so I have no idea how useful it is, though it appears it would cover everything.

http://www.peakscoachinggroup.com/store ... or-juniors

bulkydaddy

I too have a 13yr old who is cycling mad. JOIN A CLUB. Ther opportunities that then open themselves up are well worth the yearly fee. He does 'Go-ride' races on a Monday night, these include a tt, road race and handicap race. He then has an hours road racing on a Tuesday, club 10m tt on a thursday, club mtb night Friday, and either a club mtb or road run out on a Sunday.

He's just taken part in a regional GHS 10m tt, got a time of 26.03 and made it through to the final in Gloucester in Sept.

The best way to improve is
1. Ride your bike
2. Ride your bike
3. Ride your bike.

You can't push them though, they have to want to do it.

Be prepared for bankruptcy!

swaman

we are in a club, but we are in ireland so do not have go-ride

also, there are only a couple of kids in the club so not much organised youth cycling

i see two different approaches, on parent takes his son riding with a slow group on a saturday/sunday and he does all the races, road and mtb

the other parent has his son concentrating on road racing, he trains with his dad mostly, seems to be more organised training with some speed work and concentrating on fast pedaling
so even within the club there is a difference in approach, some with easy riding and varied racing with empahasis on fun, others on very structured training

i suppose what i really want to get is a general idea of sort of distance is generally accepted as safe for 14 year old and should they just be doing fun riding or should there is some structure to it taking account of things like cadence, intensity, etc

thanks

bulkydaddy

MTB for fun, road riding for training. As for distances, my son will still be fresh after a steady 75miles. Just build them up slowly, focus on avg speed 1st, dont make it over complicated.

swaman

great...thanks

ireland57

Ours is mostly mtn biking but we ride road bikes too. He now wants to road race as well.

Keep it simple. But...if he has a technical mind any good idea is worth planting the seed.

Keep absolute minimal structure unless he wants it.

Do all types of rides.......hilly ones, long slower ones, group, fast.

The max for him is a 60kms Sat am adult group ride and we do some seriously steep hills at the end. It tires him but he absolutely loves it.

I convinced my lad to use cadence to help keep him in condition for the latter stage of his races......not push big gears too much. It took a while.
Got to look after the knees.

It takes a long while to build them up...mentally and physically. We've been riding together for 2 years now. I usually make sure there's a rest day after most rides....for recovery and this other thing called school.

Last year we couldn't ride into town then do a hill circuit. Now we ride in at a pace too fast for me then smash the hills. :oops:

+ 1 Hope you're a bank manager.

bulkydaddy

One other point I forgot to make is nutrition.

Kids are kids, and most teenage boys eat bucket loadsa crap. My son knows that if he eats crap, he rides crap - simple as that. He learnt pretty quick. Plenty of oily fish and pasta. He knows that the day before a big ride its important to 'carb up'.

He still has the usual stuff, pizza, burgers, chips, crisps, but in moderation.

I've got to add, that this is all his own doing, I dont want to sound like a pushy dad - he's very motivated, and doesn't like being beaten!

I really need to take a leaf outta his book.

ireland57

bulkydaddy wrote:

One other point I forgot to make is nutrition.

+1 again.

We've both had major bonks on or after rides from not eating properly during a long ride.
Some of our offroad rides are max of 40kms but take 3-4 hrs rdiing time. We've learned to eat and drink on them now. It makes a huge difference to ride quality.

The lad lived on shite food. Now he's much fussier eating 85% decent food.
It's hard to eat and drink during a hard ride but even stopping and doing it is good.

Encourage eating and drinking on easy rides as well to get used to the feeling.
I have enormous difficulty eating and drinking at pace.

Spender45

My wee boy was out on a 25 mile charity run with me at the weekend. At 18 miles he started moaning and slowed down. It took me a couple of minutes before I realised he'd run out of fuel. A pkt of jelly babies later and he was skooting away again.

I had been nagging him about eating more breakfast that morning. Perhaps he'll listen to his old man in future, or perhaps not

dbiggings123

My son is very interested in road cycling, and looking to join a club, but I don't know what bike to get him on my tight budget - £350

fastandfurry

I worked coaching kids in rowing - similar sports although I'd guess cycling has less potential for injury (backs not involved in the same way!). At age 13, training should be relaxed and, as someone else noted, apparently unstructured - NGB guidelines for rowing are 3-4 training sessions a week as a J14 (year 9), excluding the other exercise they will naturally be doing at this age (P.E., football, running around etc).

Some random thoughts:
- Skills work with other kids would be something to include if at all possible - learning to ride in a group, track stands etc.
- With other kids makes longevity in the sport - otherwise it will never be something he 'owns' if he always trains with his dad.
- Don't buy him expensive kit from the off, no matter how much you want to (it seems to be a powerful natural instinct). Make him earn it. Two reasons - 1) he'll value the kit more and 2) it's less expensive for you if he decides to sack it in

cyco2

If possible get him to a track for training with lads his own age bracket. Enquire about bike type first but I guess for youngsters it's free wheel. I have seen youngsters who have had track training and they are stunningly fast and don't blow up up easily. It's a sad situation that there are not enough tracks available to use because an awful lot can be learned away from traffic for youngsters. I would be inclined to get a youngster in to off road riding/racing today because of the plonkers driving around. There is usually a group ride for off roaders somewhere you can let them get on with it.

fastandfurry

Here's the rowing guidance, not seen an equivalent for cycling but this should be pretty helpful (gives number of training sessions and suggested training times): http://www.britishrowing.org/upload/fil ... 181110.pdf

Pross

dbiggings123 wrote:

My son is very interested in road cycling, and looking to join a club, but I don't know what bike to get him on my tight budget - £350

If you join a club you will often find there are second hand kids bikes available as kids regularly outgrow them. In addition some divisions may have rental bikes that allow kids a chance to get into the sport without a big outlay (I know Welsh Cycling do this but don't know if they have road bikes). Some clubs may operate a similar system, mine has just started trying to do this by buying one of the second hand bikes that were for sale within the club and they charge a very small rental to cover maintenance.

Richj

fastandfurry wrote:

Here's the rowing guidance, not seen an equivalent for cycling but this should be pretty helpful (gives number of training sessions and suggested training times): http://www.britishrowing.org/upload/fil ... 181110.pdf

A good article (I am an ex-rower) and I am not sure British Cycling have the same guidelines documented anywhere. I have done the Level 2 (Go-Ride) course and I don't recall seeing anything like that. With the Go-Ride myself and other coaches are not 100% sure how our 13-16 year olds should be training for road racing (circuit racing).

simon_e

A local club with active youth section will have a regular turnover of good bikes in suitable sizes or try something like an Islabikes Luath.

Tim Buckle, Cycling Development coach with BC, visited our club recently and spoke to the junior riders about appropriate training methods. In essence, for second year under-14s looking to be competitive at national level then you should be training in some fashion 5 times a week; a mix of road ride, rollers, turbo etc. Each helps you work on different aspects of fitness, strength and skills. I'd suggest that those just getting into the sport or with other activities/commitments shouldn't be flexible and not follow this too slavishly.

He talked about the 5 areas to work on:
- bike handling skills
- speed (youth races are sometimes run at speeds comparable to elites but over much shorter distances)
- bravery (a willingness to go outside your comfort zone, not recklessness)
- tactical awareness
- hard work

An essential piece of advice I've been told about working with young club riders, especially the more talented ones, is that they should of course enjoy riding and racing but bear in mind that it's easy for them to do so much they burn out and walk away from the sport.

blackhands

I've coached plenty of young riders and the msot important thing for road (circuit) racing at that age is developing skills. We used to concentrate on bike handling/cornering using cones on a car park and having a competition with each run timed. The upshot was our riders could go into a corner in the middle of the bunch and come out 10 yards up. Also, we practised skills such as taking a bottle (the 'hander upper' also needs to practise this), getting in the right gear when cornering, sprinting.

Tom Butcher

Second all that - get the skills young - the fitness can come a bit later though if they are competitive they'll be wanting to get fit for racing anyway. I also attended the talk Simon mentions - different venue and speaker but same content - it was only Christmas time I heard it so it might be worth looking out to see if they are presenting it at a local venue.

Also very useful - have a look on the BC calendar - it now lists coaching sessions for young riders - plus there may be a GoRide club near which has sessions and other young riders. Also have a look for local youth track leagues or sessions, local cyclo-cross leagues, circuit race leagues etc - they can provide a fairly low key entry into racing.

Mr cyclist

Hi, i have just turned 15 and have been cycling seriously now for about a year, I have not done any open races but do most club events and usually manage top 5. He just needs to ride lots, I train five days a week and at that level speed is the most important, three 40 minute fast rides during the week and two longer rides 2hrs+ would probably be enough

Mr cyclist

just ride as much as possible, in the hills if possible

symo

+1 for the club route.