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Coaching with Games: PART 1

Welcome to our 3-part Coaching with Games series! We’ll highlight skills, methods, and best practices for using games with your teams.
As NICA coaches, we know that fun is an essential part of learning and whole-athlete development. Here’s how you can become a pro at COACHING WITH GAMES!

MEET THE COACH: Jill Bradley

Jill Bradley, a powerhouse coach, staff, and leader from the Idaho Interscholastic Cycling League, is this month’s MEET THE COACH feature! Learn about Jill and her best relationship-centered advice for NICA athletes and coaches.

Team Expansion Playbook

It can be scary and intimidating to split a large and successful team. Splitting a growing team can be a really good thing! It means that you’ve created something so amazing that it needs to grow. NICA’s new Composite Team Expansion Playbook helps guide you through team growth and helps teams understand when and how to split their teams.

Design a kit with Borah Teamwear

Designing a team kit is a process that can be both exciting, fun, creative…and maybe a bit daunting. Teams have so many choices to make when it comes to vendors and types of kits. And, design options are literally endless! NICA partner Borah Teamwear works with hundreds of NICA teams across the country (in addition to their many other clients) to make the team kit process as simple as possible. Borah offers discounted pricing exclusively for NICA teams, has a wide variety of kit styles and options, plus they provide full-service design support, easy online ordering, and even a size guarantee to ensure your riders end up with the right fit!

In an open field, a cyclist rides past the camera, while another cyclist behind them rides underneath a limbo stick while balancing on their bike.

Adapting Games at Practice

Games increase fun, joy, and skill development. Allowing our athletes to play supports connection to their teammates and the sport of mountain biking. Coaches work in a dynamic environment, and your games will often need to be revised or adapted. Making a change doesn’t mean that you did something wrong, or that it was a bad game. It is essential to adapt activities to ensure that athletes are having fun and experiencing the right level of challenge.

Training Zones & Injury

Injuries are common during athletic activities, including sports like mountain biking. As coaches, we know crashes are inevitable and that part of our duty is to try and mitigate risk as much as possible. We can use training zones to help us manage these risks thoughtfully.

FOOT Down

This classic game with endless creative progressions can help athletes learn balance, coordination, ratcheting, and ultimately, track stands. How does your team play foot down?

Brain Injury Awareness

March is brain injury awareness month, a great reminder for coaches to refresh their knowledge on concussion protocols and training. Check out these concussion-specific resources and tools to ensure you’re doing everything you can to keep athletes safe and healthy.

How to sequence games throughout your season

On and off the bikes games are great! Especially if you play the right game at the right time. The athletes will be engaged, they will have fun, and they will learn something. If we play a game before our athletes have the social and MTB skills necessary to play the game, the game can be frustrating, no fun, and potentially dangerous. Great coaches and teams understand when to play games and how to adapt them to the athletes in front of them.

Try-it-out templates

As NICA coaches, it’s part of our job to create welcoming and inclusive spaces on our teams, but it can be hard to try to explain every aspect of riding to someone who has never heard of mountain biking before. It can be an intimidating space to be a beginner, whether you’re a parent of a rider, a new athlete, or even a new coach. A half-day or two-hour “try-it-out” event is the perfect intro to MTB for many beginners!