I have offered to help coach a group of 8-10 year old kids once a week for an hour on the bike as part of a school triathlon program and am not sure exactly how to go about it.
Does anyone have a skills progression suggestion?
What would you guys teach?
We have a parking lot and a big field. I am guessing that most of the kids will be on mountain bikes and I would rather not take them on the road.
Thanks for all of your suggestions
at this age, they shouldn’t do more than 30km in the water, 400km on the bike and 90km run.
Is this the Hellriegle development plan?
30km in the water?
- Make sure all their bikes are in working order (brakes, tires etc.), safe, and helmets fit before you start.
-Skills: -cone off various course and teach them about turning and braking. (change this course weekly to be more difficult and have fun with it) Practice braking and dismounting / mounting the bike. They should understand hand signals as well. Like cars & tri rules - practice riding to the right, pass on the left. They can be taught patience & endurance skills if they are planning on particpating in an event (kids will have the tendency to always want to go fast … let them, but teach them to ride slow as well;) Shifting … many of these kids will have bikes with gears … educate them about them and set up scenarios where they have to shift.
Could go on forever but maybe that gets you thinking:)
Have fun … you’ll enjoy it!
that’s the soft version of Hellriegel 
.
Thanks for your help.
I hadn’t thought of the hand signals and rules of the road bit, I’ll definitely use that.
show them what 10 meters represent…
Francois,
You would be a terrifying kids coach.
They would either redefine uber-athlete or would end up in a vegitative state or a straight jacket, murmuring drafting is evil over and over again
most kids (and some grown-ups) have a hard time riding a straight line. Make two parallel lines with chalk and have them ride between the lines. Having them start off between 2 lines of cones so they learn not to weave all over the place. Make the lines closer and closer as their skill improves.
Other than that, alternate riding a lap around the parking lot and running a lap around the field and make it fun. Maybe adds laps each week as they improve. My daughter is 10 and runs in track team. From what I’ve seen, to kids this age, EVERYTHING is a race- even the cool down laps at the end of practice are a mad sprint between the boys and girls. They have fun when they’re racing each other but if they think they’re just doing drills it’s not very fun.
“I would rather not take them on the road.”
They’re gonna have to learn about traffic at some point
.
Big field, helmets/glloves, and bikes in working order is all you need for starters, ie, to teach them how to properly operate a bike. Do NOT let them go on pavement until you’re confident they can ride a bike slowly in a straight line, obviously.
I’ve coached kids, and actually wrote an UG thesis on teaching mt biking to kids. It’s easier than you think if you’re good at crowd control. If you want me to, I can dig around to see if I have a copy lying around (Long time ago) w/ some fun drills in it if you want.
I teach children for a living, (martial arts) here are a couple of pointers on working with them. I will leave the bike skills stuff to the guys who know it and focus on working with the kids.
When correcting an error, use “praise, correct praise” as a formula for feedback. Say the little dude went out of the chalk lines 1/3 of the way down the course. “Great job, look how far you got”, “now the secret to doing this is XXXXX”, and when they try again give them praise even if they blow it. “good job, took a little fall, but you got right back up” This may sound stupid but you won’t believe how much this improves the attitudes of kids trying to do something difficult.
Disguise repetiion. They way to get better at something is too pratice it properly over and over. We have the mental discipline to do this kids don’t. Here’s an example. You want to have the kids pratice mounting and dismounting. Have then do this as a drill for a litttle bit. Then split them into teams and tell them that you praticed that to do this game. Ride 50 yds, dismount do 5 pushups, remount ride 50 yds, dismount carry bike on shoulder 10 yds remount, ride 50 yds, dismount, pick up waterbottle with chin, (chin to chest) remount and ride back without dropping bottle. Next person goes. Then have them ride relays around a course as teams sharing 1 bike, on each lap “transition” and a new rider takes the bike. This is probably enough for a whole training session, as they will want to do some of these several times. They had a blast, and you had them getting on and off their bikes the whole day. If you had said we are going to do mounting and dismounting all day nobody would be at your next pratice.
btw i picked that as subject for simplicity, I highly doubt you need to spend a whole day on mounting and dismounting.
Every time you decide to do something look at it this way, in this order.
-
Safe
-
Fun
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Learning something
Keeps you from making a critical error either in safety or boring them to death.
If you have any questions feel free to pm me. I have been designing drills and training goals for my students for years and know what a kid a=can and cannot do. I also know how to hold their attention.
Thanks to all of you for your help,
Some good pointers there.
I’ll let you guys know if any stories come about through it
I would recommand www.itutv.com there are two videos called “Kids og Steel” (can’t remember the exact name, but something like that). You can watch them for free online, there’s a lot of inspirations for coaches who teachs kids triathlon.
I have a little exprience coaching kids in swimming and a wealth of experience watching my kids and their friends be coached by a number of different coaches and driving them home from practice and listening to them talk.
Kids do really get off on being challenged and succeeding in meeting the challenge. The kids are excited after they have been asked to do something they didn’t think they could do and then pulled it off. You can see their confidence grow.
One suggestion I’ll offer is have the kids do something a little beyond what they think they can do. I’m not sure what that might be in cycling at the ages you’re working with but soemthing like doing a 10 or 20 mile ride if they are comfortable going 5 or 10. If your limited to the parking lot, just have them do laps. (They don’t know any better so they’ll do it if you ask them to.) They should be a little scared at the start. When they finish they will be very excited. (of course, the key is not to set them up to fail so you have to give some thought to what the right challenge is.)
Kudos to you for taking on this challenge! You have received some great advice already, thanks to everyone for their great suggestions. The one thing that I would add is to try to aproximate their race conditions in their training. The youth races around here are much more difficult to race then the sprints. The bike courses range from 3 laps of a 2 mile loop to one that is 10 laps of a 1/2 mile course. These races can be difficult and dangerous due to the number of kids and their lack of knowledge and experience. Good luck to you and the kids. They are lucky to have you!