As athletes near race season, Xhale coach Caroline Livesey here takes you through how you can make the most of your pre-race days with a recce of the race course, and what you should be looking out for.
Tag: Xhale
Optimising your training recovery strategy
Whether professional or an age-group athlete, understanding how to optimise recovery and developing a plan to achieve this are critical to your progression. Here, Dr Sam Shepherd explains why getting the right nutrition will help you to recover better and reap the rewards the of training. He delves into what key principles you should follow when it comes to recovery and tips on how to implement these into your training plan.
Safe Winter Running Adventures
It’s winter. The weather is cold, grey, wet and windy and it’s dark by 4pm. Fell running at this time of year just isn’t much fun!
However, what about those blue sky days where the air is cold and crisp? What about those days after it has snowed and the weather has calmed down but it is still cold enough that the snow hasn’t turned to slush? What about those dark nights under a big moon and the lights of the nearest village twinkling in the distance – those are great days to be out on the hills!
In this post Dave Taylor (Fell Running Guide) shares some of his top tips for getting out in the winter weather safely.
Getting Started – Part 2
In Part 2 of our coach onboarding series, the team from Xhale present to you some of the basics of coaching using the platform, how to make your coaching more efficient, and how to build plans without your athletes seeing what you are working on.
Choosing a wetsuit
Wetsuit technology has come a long way in the last 5 years, and for the majority of people, if your wetsuit is older than 5 years then investing in a new one will have a significant impact on your swim times. But how do you choose the right one for you?
Pool Swimming V’s Open Water
Xhale co-founder and hugely experienced triathlon coach Mark Livesey talks us through why for some athletes their pool swimming speed doesn’t translate to open water, and what they can do about it.
6 Golden Rules of Nutrition for Endurance Athletes
Caroline Livesey takes us through 6 Golden Rules for your day to day nutrition to help you get the most out of your training plan. While people are constantly looking for quick fixes to help with weights or energy management, as this article points out – if you don’t get the basics right you will never progress no matter how hard you train.
Training for a fell running season
Fell and trail running seasons are notoriously varied, long, and difficult to train for. Here coach and mountain expert David Taylor of Fell Running Guide takes us through ways of structuring your season and training to get the best from yourself in these arduous races. He covers picking races, strength training, common mistakes and how to juggle all the demands on your body.
Getting Started – Part 1
This is part 1 of our coaching resources – specifically for coaches and athletes using XHALE. Here you can learn about downloading the app, what the app can do for you, how to get started with onboarding athletes, and setting up their training programmes.
The Role of Subjective Feedback in the Coach-Athlete Relationship and the Importance of RPE as a Measure of Intensity
Pierre and Nicolette from Mountain Abandon were early adopters of our RPE scale for athlete feedback. In this article they present the science behind RPE, how they track athlete progress/fatigue with this data, and why they believe it develops the athletes inherent ability to self govern. In ultra running and endurance sports, being able to pace yourself correctly and evaluate intensity is key to success in both training and racing. With RPE we have a consistent measurement relaying only on the athletes brain, overcoming issue with poor data from devices which cannot know weather temperatures, caffeine consumption, sleep deprivation and other variables.
Coaching Function Highlight: RPE
In this article Caroline Livesey explains why RPE is a key metric for her coaching, how it is integrated into Xhale, and how it might be useful for you as a coach. If you want to know more about this feature then this is the place to start.
Just one more rep
Xhale co-founder and triathlon coach Mark Livesey presents the founding reasons for the creating of Xhale. He remembers some of his early experiences with coaches and instructors in the military. He quickly realised that the “old” style of coaching – breaking soldiers with “just one more rep” – did not develop resilience and instead caused unnecessary stress and resistance. Through these experiences he developed his own coaching style based on communication and the coach/athlete relationship. These are the principles on which Xhale is founded.