Youth & Junior Training Week

Post date: Jan 29, 2018 8:12:36 PM

(By Tommy Hogan - Sun. 28th January 2018)

Our week started on Tuesday night with a watt bike training programme organised by our coach Damien Shaw at the clubhouse for the youth & junior racing team. This was a tough forty minutes with very little recovery time. It consisted of twelve three-minute efforts which are designed to improve our tempo and sprint power.

On Wednesday evening we had our usual turbo session in the clubhouse. This is for both the racing team and beginners. Eamon Hogan took the class with Susanne Wallace and Philip Wade also in attendance as helpers. The session consisted of five minute TT efforts. This class usually has a good attendance with the majority of the turbos being used.

To add to our busy training schedule, on Thursday night we went to NGS for our weekly training programme set out by Damien, and the instructors at NGS. In this session we mostly focused on leg work with some core and upper body workouts.

The final training session of the week for the racing team was on Saturday morning which consisted of a two and a half hour road spin with Damien. We set out from the clubhouse and headed towards Ballynacargy for some hill repeat efforts. Damien put us through our paces with numerous sprints up the same hill. After this difficult session we cycled further out the road taking every chance to a rest before we arrived at the bottom of Laragh Hill. Here, Damien kept us focused with four more climbs against a head wind making the difficult climb even harder. After the hard efforts, we cycled back to the clubhouse for a debrief on the days training from Damien which helped us all make sense of the drills.

While we were out on the road there was also some skills training for the beginners at the clubhouse with Eamon Hogan and David Flaherty. This included some basic training in bike handling, going over ramps, around cones etc. important stuff before heading out on the road.

Some of the youth group ready to go on a training spin this morning with coach Damien Shaw