Whilst there are some fitness fundamentals that should be the focus of your programme there will be some areas that need tailoring to you.

Maybe now you’re back out competing you’ve noticed there are still a few areas for improvement.

There are things in competition that you just can’t prepare for at home.

Firstly, there is the excitement and nerves on the day. How you deal with this mentally can have an affect on you physically.

Shallow breathing as a result of nerves means you aren’t sending enough Oxygen to your brain to enable it to focus or your muscles to provide them with power.

If this is you maybe add a breathing focus into your training. Adding a breathing cue to movement can make it a more natural thing for you to do in moments when you aren’t fully focusing on it. Yoga, Pilates and Weightlifting have a coached breathing element to it.

Perhaps you noticed that your body wasn’t up to the extra effort you put in on competition day.

You rode the round of your life but you finished it breathing harder than expected. You may be already doing cardio sessions but could you change them up a bit if you feel like you still weren’t fit enough to perform at your absolute best.

If you’re running or cycling for example you could try training at Threshold pace. There are formulas etc for calculating this if you’re using heart rate monitors but in it’s basic form its training at a pace that’s just harder than your regular pace but not so hard you can’t sustain it. Basically it feels really, really hard! Or you could try interval training-short bursts of high efforts followed by a short rest period. These can be done for set timed efforts or more sporadically if you are outside and just run/cycle faster then slower between different points.

Maybe you lost power in your legs and core so weren’t riding as well as you could for the full round. You need to work on your muscular strength and endurance. This could be adding more volume to your weight training sessions; maybe adding in some isometric work or time under tension training. In simple terms increasing the length of time the muscle is contracting during the exercise.

If you’d like some help with tweaking your training I’ve got space for 121 in person and Zoom training.