During his racing career, Sven Nys was known for his legendary work ethic. In retirement, he still has been seen getting after it from time to time.
Based on Nys’ Instagram page, his 15-year old son Thibau appears to share his father’s commitment to working hard. A series of recent—and older—videos posted by the elder Nys show some of the workouts the young future star has been doing.
In the videos, Thibau does drills based based on agility and explosiveness that look like they are taken from a sport such as basketball or football.
MontanaCrossCamp director Geoff Proctor uses a similar approach of deriving drills from other sports like skiing, as we saw in our inside look at off-the-bike drills from the development camp.
Proctor’s drills and these from Thibau Nys show that inspiration for off-the-bike drills can come from any number of sports. You may not be able to elevate like Thibau Nys, but with the offseason approaching, it can never hurt to try new things. Well, it can hurt in the sense you will be sore for a few days, but improvement in skill will likely follow.
Mini Training Tuesday with Thibau Nys
There’s lateral explosion:
Impressive ups:
More impressive ups:
Okay fine, one more time:
Then there’s redelijk goed die explosiviteit:
Balance and control:
And finally agility, aka the proper way to use rollers:
The young Nys turned 15 last month, so we will likely be seeing his agility and power on the international stage starting next year. In the mean time, we will keep our eyes peeled for more offseason training ideas from the future stars of cyclocross.
