Sunday, October 17, 2010

2010 USA Cycling Summit

About 90 of us made our biennial trek to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for the 2010 USA Cycling Summit. The accommodations are great and the weather was beautiful. We had about a dozen coaches from NorCal, most of which spend a bit of time at the track so it was a chance for some good hang time.


Following is a brief summary of the 12 lectures we attended in five days...

---------------------------------------------

Challenges Facing Coaches Istvan Balyi
Long-Term Athlete Development Istvan Balyi

Lots of great info on early childhood development and dealing with the teenage growth spurt.
Also some good stuff on periodization.

---------------------------------------------

Communication Kirsten Peterson, PhD

Some great tools to assess and improve communication between individual athletes.
Also how to use the same tools with a club or team.

----------------------------------------------

Thermoregulation Stacy Sims, PhD

Don't use ice to cool off. Cool water on the wrists and palms is better.
Water in your bottles and real food in your pockets is best.

----------------------------------------------

Sprint Track Training Jamie Staff

We need to open a pipeline between BMX and track racing.
I was hoping for training details but got none.

-----------------------------------------------

Paralympic Cycling Craig Griffin

Got me thinking about another program for our velodrome.
Lots of wounded vets are coming home that need an outlet.

-----------------------------------------------

Altitude Training Randy Wilber, PhD

If you need the benefit of altitude training it still takes four weeks.
Got some good advice on traveling to race at altitude.
All the other stuff sounded a bit too much like doping to me.

------------------------------------------------

Mountain Bike Training Kristen Dieffenbach, PhD

Kristen is a great speaker and very passionate.
Of course her lecture was more about psychology that training.

------------------------------------------------

Aerodynamics Andy Coggan, PhD

Oh my god, this was too close to rocket science.
If you go in a wind tunnel be sure to test in a crosswind.

------------------------------------------------

Concussions Bernard Condevaux

Don't hit your head. If you do, seek medical advice and be conservative.

------------------------------------------------

Business of Coaching Gale Bernhardt

Time to rewrite my business plan and mission statement.

-------------------------------------------------

Using Technology Steve McGregor, PhD

Always a pleasure to listen to Dr. McGregor. He is dry, witty, and very sarcastic.
Great new tools are coming for measuring training stress for runners and tri-geeks.

1 comment:

Heather Nielson said...

Thanks for sharing Dino! Very helpful and useful...