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« on: February 25, 2009, 04:11:38 am » |
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Australian Elite Development BMX Squad Training Camp
A look into the cutting edge Australian Elite Development BMX Training Camp from Elite Women's member, Caroline Buchanan!
The Australian Elite Development training squad consists of Sam Willoughby, Josh Callan, Lauren Reynolds, Rachel Bracken and myself Caroline Buchanan. Brian Kirkham also joined us for a week leading up to Adelaide. The 2 month training camp based on the Gold Coast QLD at the Runaway Bay Sports Super Centre was a huge success. Having Wade Bootes the head coach living with us on campus 24/7 was ideal, he was always pushing, inspiring and opening our eyes to get us to the next level and be the best BMX racers in the world.
Racing results: QLD Pro Bikx double round Result: Sam Willoughby semis + #1st jnr elite, Josh Callan #1st and 3rdjnr elite, Lauren Reynolds #1 jnr elite women both days, Rachel Bracken #3rd + #2nd jnr elite, Caroline Buchanan #1st elite women both days. Ashmore QLD Open event Result: Lauren #1st, Caroline #2nd, Rachel #3rd, Sam #2nd and Josh Callan #3rd 4x Mountain Bike National Championships Stromlo Canberra Result: Sam #2nd, Josh 8th, Caroline #1st, Lauren #2nd and Rachel #4th Adelaide SA Pro Bikx round Result: Josh #2nd, Caroline #2nd, Lauren #1st and Rachel #3rd.
GYM As a group many of us were reaching our personal bests each gym session. When we are all at home our individual sporting academies QAS, ACTAS, WAIS, SASI and VIS monitor and guide our progress in the gym. It was really good having Wade with us 24/7 at the Sports Super Center gym as we all saw many improvements and were pushed to new levels.
Nutrition/Hydration Kelly and Mark from the Queensland Academy of Sport helped us out with our nutrition, hydration, cooling and supplements. They really put an emphasis on the importance of eating correctly and hydrating fully. We cooked our lunches and dinners, had a tour of a shopping center, learnt to read food labels and what to look for, cooking with the bare essentials when traveling, how to make our own sports supplements for half the price from our local supermarket and measured fluid losses during sessions.
Gates and sprints During our gate start sessions each week we worked as a team by learning off one another to improve our times. Our gate start sessions were short efforts at 100% effort. During the sessions we were focusing on quality, technique and times rather than quantity. Our sprint sessions varied over the 7 weeks of the camp depending on what phase we were in. We did sprint sessions on clips, flat pedals, rolling starts, standing starts, left and right foot starts, race gearing/ hard gearing and speed sprints behind the motorbike. Recovery plays a major role in BMX as we need to repeat maximal efforts after one another and back it up again the next day quite often. During the camp we had ice baths, spa baths, monitored our resting heart rates, stretched, had yoga classes and swimming. (Spa)
SOCIAL We did many social activities: went and watched the Supercross racing (motorbikes) talked to Steve Johnson, met Troy Bayliss 3 time World Superbike Champion at the Leatt Brace grand opening, had a tour of Dick Johnson Racing, a tour of Ant Man Helmet designs, cooked lunch and dinners and did lots of cross training like motorbike riding, tubing on the jet ski, mountain bike riding, dirt jumping, Go-Karts with Steven Johnson (Fords v8 supercar driver) and rode some skate parks.
Skills The majority of our skill development during the camp was on our BMX bikes. We focused mainly on our mountain bike skills in the lead up to the Australian Championships where we all competed in the elite 4x category. We tried to spend as much time as we could on our BMX bikes but also incorporating the cross training and had a skill acquisition talk from Megan at the QAS to increase our skill development taking us to the next level.
Media We were able to get quite a bit of media over the camp with the local Channel 9 News, various news papers around Australia, ABC TV, Cycling Central, Scope and WIN TV.
Myself and the rest of the EDS team thoroughly enjoyed the camp, we loved purely being full time athletes and we have all benefited greatly from it in every aspect physical, mental, technical and tactical preparation.
Quotes: Caroline: “The camp was extremely beneficial for me I was able to learn why and understand the reasoning behind sports science and the training methods and cycles. I love living, breathing and being a full a time athlete.”
Lauren: “The past 2 months has been the best opportunity to train in a small group of riders all chasing the one dream, under full guidance of Wade Bootes and support from Cycling Australia and our state institutes. One step closer every day!”
Rachel: “It’s been really useful having our coach around 24/7 to make sure I’m doing all the right things.”
Brian: “I only got to ride a part of the camp, but it was great to be in a training environment with 5 other good riders and to have input from Wade with everything we did.”
Josh: “I really enjoyed just focusing on my training over the past 2 months, not having to worry about school work and my busy life. So it has been a great opportunity to get some great training in and work hard!”
Sam: “It has been great to be around 5 other athletes who share the same passion, vision and goal as I do. Working with Wade and the team has been another great stepping stone for us all working towards DOMINATING THE WORLD!!!”
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