Managing Performance During Lockdown.

Luke Moir is one of South Africa’s top junior mountain biking prospects. An excellent placing in the 2019 Junior XCO World Champs (5th Overall) boosted him to the top of the Junior UCI World Rankings for XCO starting off the 2020 season. Luke, as many of our other Science to Sport Athletes, is currently in lockdown, only able to train from home.

Dr Mike Posthumus, Luke’s coach has given some insight to the type of training Luke is doing during this period:

We often use the term “building a strong foundation”, or a strong “base” very loosely without a true appreciation of what we are trying to achieve. With no races in the near future, there is no better time to take a step back, use this time wisely and to your advantage, whilst remembering to have fun along the way. Over the last few weeks, Luke’s training has consisted of all of the above.

Foundations
We have included longer rides in zone 2. Training volume remains one of the primary drivers of endurance performance and there is simply no substitute of short cut for time in the saddle. We have also been including a few training sessions we call “metabolic” sessions. The term “metabolic” was coined by the coaches from Science to Sport due to the primary outcome related to becoming more metabolically flexible, i.e. emphasising lactate shuttling and its use as a fuel source.