3 months with RISE MTB Performance Coaching
Late last year Karen Maidment and Adrian Stokes of RISE MTB Performance Coaching and Pure Body Balance walked into my life at a time when I was really struggling with my nutrition and training. I was working with Katy Curd to help improve my riding but I wasn’t eating properly for the amount of exercise I was doing and, following an illness, I’d recently collapsed at a race making me realise that things needed to change. As it often does, the universe heard my call and this husband and wife team were my answer.
A corrective exercise specialist, Adrian has spear-headed Katy Curd’s recovery from major concussion and is at the centre of her rehabilitation and return to racing this year. Karen specialises in health, nutrition and life coaching and yoga. Together with my ongoing coaching with Katy they cocooned me at the weekend and really felt like a dream support team. A month after the holistic retreat Karen contacted me and said they were setting up a new programme of coaching for mountain bikers and they would like to give me a 3-month package to see what we could achieve together. They’d recognised that I needed serious direction and after years of stress as a special needs mum my body was in need of care and attention.
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| Working with Adrian and Karen feels like you're in the middle of a big, supportive, knowledgeable hug! |
Karen and Adrian’s work is based around the ‘4 Doctors’ that rule our bodies and lives: Diet (keeping the body running properly), Quiet (hormones, rest, introspection – feeding our soul in many ways), Movement (the muscular/skeletal system); and Happy (our limbic system – psychology, emotions). During the 3-months Karen and I worked largely on diet and then moved on to quiet; while Adrian and I worked exclusively on movement.
Adrian – corrective exercise
Like many riders I presented Adrian with several injuries and issues when we first met – over the years I’ve had two knee ops from running injuries, carried and delivered two children and most recently acquired a nice rotator cuff injury coming out of a bomb hole…. Adrian’s training and fascination with the body and the ‘sling systems’ of muscle groups and fascia (literally the skin that covers all the elements of the body) means that he can see how these old problems affect my riding and the additional feedback from Katy confirmed this. The first session I had with Adrian was spent measuring, assessing and watching how I move. I had expected to be given a training programme for the gym but Adrian made it clear that you have to ‘earn your exercise’. In other words, Adrian has to be happy that your body is in a strong and stable condition before you start training otherwise you will simply be reinforcing old problems. Being a bit of an exercise addict I found this hard to digest at first. It’s testament to the trust and confidence I have in Adrian that I accepted his rules and diligently started with the flexibility and mobility programme. Going through the stretches in the session, Adrian then sends you detailed photographs and explanations of how each stretch is performed.
Katy and Adrian noticed that I was finding it hard to get down low in attack position, over the front of the bike, due to an old rotator cuff injury. Adrian explained that the body’s nervous system will simply override any requests that it feels it can’t cope with. My injury meant that I currently didn’t have the flexibility in that shoulder to ride in that position. Sure enough, within a few weeks all that had changed and I truly felt I was lower on the bike and stronger in these positions. A month later, at our second session, Adrian added some extra ELDOA stretches which are designed to release the fascia within the body and let you stand taller and straighter. ELDOA has to be one of the most effective but most intense and painful series of stretches I’ve ever done. However, the release that you feel as a result is incredible. By the third month I was allowed to move on to stability work – focusing on the core strength that all riders need in order to move around the bike. As a working Mum with a perfectionist nature, it took me a while to accept that I can’t do all the exercises every day. Instead I aim for one of each set twice a week as even finding a spare half an hour in my life can be hard.
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| This is one of my favourite core strength exercises |
Katy and Adrian noticed that I was finding it hard to get down low in attack position, over the front of the bike, due to an old rotator cuff injury. Adrian explained that the body’s nervous system will simply override any requests that it feels it can’t cope with. My injury meant that I currently didn’t have the flexibility in that shoulder to ride in that position. Sure enough, within a few weeks all that had changed and I truly felt I was lower on the bike and stronger in these positions. A month later, at our second session, Adrian added some extra ELDOA stretches which are designed to release the fascia within the body and let you stand taller and straighter. ELDOA has to be one of the most effective but most intense and painful series of stretches I’ve ever done. However, the release that you feel as a result is incredible. By the third month I was allowed to move on to stability work – focusing on the core strength that all riders need in order to move around the bike. As a working Mum with a perfectionist nature, it took me a while to accept that I can’t do all the exercises every day. Instead I aim for one of each set twice a week as even finding a spare half an hour in my life can be hard.
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| These dog-eared pieces of paper have become my daily exercise bible |
Karen – nutrition and lifestyle coaching
Everyone who works with Karen will come from a different starting point and for me it was nutrition. I was following standard nutrition guidelines: plenty of fresh fruit and veg, porridge for breakfast, low fat, little refined sugar and yet I was constantly craving sweet food and would simply run out of energy when riding. After completing a series of detailed assessments Karen was able to enlighten me: ironically in my body, the carb-heavy way I was eating was causing my blood sugar to peak and crash, which made me crave sweet food to pick it up again. She taught me to listen to my body and feed it in a different ratio of foods that were high protein and high good fat with a decreased amount of carbohydrate. I’ve always loved red meat, nuts and cheese so this really didn’t feel like much hardship. To the amusement of my friends I swapped my legendary flapjacks for chunks of cheese on the trails. It worked – instead of getting to a point a few hours in where my muscles were happy but I simply had no energy, I was now feeling strong and able to keep riding. It’s not easy and I’m still learning to eat properly and consistently every day so that I can fuel the three or four rides a week that I do.
Karen taught me to ignore received ideas about what breakfast or lunch should look like, focusing instead on the type of food I’m consuming. At first I was worried that moving to full fat foods I would put on fat but instead my body feels stronger and more resilient. Detailed food diaries where I record how my body feels 1-2 hours after a meal are helping me to identify which foods make me feel calm and full and which leave me feeling jittery and craving sugar or simply hungry. In our final month together Karen and I began to work on Dr Quiet – the idea of recharging my batteries and learning to be calm and restorative rather than simply cramming everything I possibly can into one day. This might take a while to learn!
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| Cheese and meat slice from Peaslake Stores for the win! |
Karen taught me to ignore received ideas about what breakfast or lunch should look like, focusing instead on the type of food I’m consuming. At first I was worried that moving to full fat foods I would put on fat but instead my body feels stronger and more resilient. Detailed food diaries where I record how my body feels 1-2 hours after a meal are helping me to identify which foods make me feel calm and full and which leave me feeling jittery and craving sugar or simply hungry. In our final month together Karen and I began to work on Dr Quiet – the idea of recharging my batteries and learning to be calm and restorative rather than simply cramming everything I possibly can into one day. This might take a while to learn!
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| Eggs, avocado and bacon refuel between practice and racing at Southern Enduro Round 1 |
I’m a passionate but ultimately recreational rider so I have to accept that my ability to implement things is going to be different to a professional athlete. However, the changes I have made and incorporated into my life are enabling me to ride more, ride stronger and ride better. That’s got to be a good thing. I have a far greater understanding of and respect for my body and how it works and that’s all down to my time with Karen and Adrian.
Note: this blog is an honest review of my experiences with Karen and Adrian, but I received their 3-month package as a gift and did not pay for it.