4 Tiers of CritFit
1. Functional Strength (Flexibility, Core, and Strength) The well rounded athlete.
~~As most of you know, to get the most out of your cycling fitness you need to have a strong core. Some of you may even know flexibility is instrumental in developing better, longer lasting positioning on the bike. But, I am willing to bet, several of you are neglecting your total body conditioning. This is easy to do when we are always on the bike. What do we do? Balance, balance, balance! The winter time is usually a great time to work on total body strength, but don’t stop when the season starts. Set aside a few blocks of time weekly to maintain your total body fitness. In addition, you should always work on your flexibility. This will aid in giving you greater comfort on the bike during those long rides and help with recovery. The faster you recover the sooner you can train and training makes you faster. We have come full circle in our many years of coaching and training. We use to prescribe to the mantra, “Thinner is better”. This may be true for the professional cyclists but for us and the thousands of racers outer there, put some lean muscle on your bones. Not only will the addition of lean muscle make you feel better but it will help you in your effort to follow tier #2.
2. Nutrition (Weight Management, Proper Diet, Food as Fuel)
~~You can do everything perfectly: ride 18 hrs a week with complete precision, and consistently follow up with 9 hrs of sleep and a 1 hr nap daily. But drop the ball on your food intake and you’re toast. Let me simplify: garbage in equals garbage out. This doesn’t mean you have to eat nothing but vegan soy tofu kabobs. Just pay attention to what is going into your body. I think it’s funny that most cyclist have no reservations about putting down $750-$1000 on wheels that are 200g lighter, but think about it: isn’t it much cheaper to put down the donut? One tool we have found very useful in monitoring our nutrition is the use of a program called http://www.loseit.com . We really like this program. It helps us monitor what is going into the machine and it helps us drop weight when needed at a rate that is sustainable.
3. Recovery (The most neglected tier for most athletes)
~~Why is this so difficult? Maybe because we are simply over achievers. Maybe because it is easier to tell your riding buddies that you trained to much than it is to suffer during a hard push and drop them. Maybe its because it offers us an unlimited source of excuses. What ever it is, stop it! Train hard and recover just as hard. This means embracing flexibilty/strength/recovery. We believe nothing works as well as foam rolling. This training gem has totally changed how we train and recover. If you will make foam rolling a part of your daily diet you will find that you recover faster and again the faster you recover the sooner you can train and training makes you stronger.
4. Race/ride Fit (Endurance, speed, and cycling specific fitness)
~~This is the easy one. This is the one we all love to do and it takes very little convincing to get you to do it. Lets be honest, training is why we are here. I have one word of caution for you though, we love training. We train hard and we ride/race even harder. We are not a bunch of elitists who think they are cycling gods. We are just hard core riders. We don’t make excuses when we come up short we just simply train harder. We encourage each other and pick each other up when we fall. If you share our love for cycling and training then you certainly have found a home. Welcome to the CritFit House.
