Athlete portrait: Christian Mayer

Today I am opening a small series in which I will introduce a few of my athletes. I would like to start with Christian from St. Pölten in Austria. We started a little more than a year ago, that is, in the last off-season 2010. At the beginning of this year, the first competitions followed, well, which in turn was followed by many more. If I think about it correctly, then Christian was one of my most diligent athletes in terms of competitions I took part in.

Actually quite unusual, considering how young he is. His wheel strength is also unusual, here he is usually one of the fastest of the day. Normally, good wheel pressure only develops after many years of training. Apparently this is one of his talents. Often this also comes from cycling to school every day, for example as a child.

Christian has generally developed very quickly. Let's take a look at the comparison between October 2010 and his current level of performance. Said period therefore a complete year of training from zero to today: (click to enlarge)

October 2010
November 2011

In swimming he has mastered himself from being a non-swimmer to a passable crawler (times refer to a 400m test), although I still see a lot of potential and believe that we will fall below the 6 min limit next year. Of course, the last swim test was a while ago, and the competitions were in between. His current level of performance will be around 6:25.

In cycling (10km test), as I said, there was already a good level back then, which has increased significantly again. Unfortunately, the last test was a bit behind here too, now Christian should drive around 14:20.

When running, it was important to me that he maintained or even increased his basic speed, but at the same time increased his endurance. You can see this most clearly in the running tests. It should be noted that he could run the 1000m in less than 2:50 minutes if one omits the five 1000er intervals beforehand, in which the pre-exhaustion naturally increases significantly. But this is how the test is structured 😉 What is remarkable here is that his maximum heart rate has also increased significantly due to the training.

With young athletes it is IMPERATIVE to note that they do not complete extensive training and longer competitions, but rather a mix of athleticism, game and speed training! On the one hand, they can easily cope with high intensities, but can be overloaded by excessive volumes, and on the other hand, you don't want to let them slow down. Extensive training does exactly the latter. But since sprint distances are in the foreground for Christian, he does not yet need any long-term endurance skills. These increase with age anyway. Later on it is much easier to take a high basic speed with you over the longer distance. It doesn't work the other way around, so trying to get fast after years of extensive extensive training is extremely difficult.

Rock`n Roll Christian !!
krelli

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