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Sam Willoughby’s world-beating training regime

By Daniel Williams

Find your edge
Aged six, Sam Willoughby straddled a BMX bike for the first time. At 16, he flew out of hometown Adelaide with a backpack and a puny bank balance to try his luck in California. At 20, he won silver at the 2012 Olympics. It’s a trajectory suggestive of rude natural talent, but Willoughby argues otherwise. “The fact is, I’m not the most naturally gifted rider and that drove me to learn as much as I could about the physical side of competing,” he says.

Labour’s legacy
Willoughby was barely a teen when his Mum steered him toward Craig Colduck, a strength and conditioning coach. “He’d done his PhD on power in cycling and was ahead of the game,” says Willoughby. “At 13, I was learning how to do single-leg variations of snatches, pulls and cleans.” While this kind of training didn’t help his riding at the time, Willoughby sensed he was building a base from which something substantial would arise.

Lesson in legs
Willoughby’s arse-to-the-grass squatting technique would makes your knees yelp just watching him. His quads – rounded, dense, striated – scream power. Those rods of steel have been hard-won. Twice a week during off-season (late November through March) Willoughby hits the gym for sessions lasting upwards of three hours, with an unrelenting focus on the core down. “Some guys try to pretend that our sport is about getting
a beach body and looking good between the heats, but for me it’s all about being on the podium,” says Willoughby, who won 19 of his 23 races in the US last season.

Load up
His gym workouts focus initially on agility, with Willoughby leaping from balls onto boxes. They then turn heavy, with the rider knocking off sets of squats, deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts and good mornings under the exacting eye of his coach, Sean Dwight. “We’d never go above five reps and most of the time it’s three. For the squat, I’ll do 140-160 kilograms, moving the weight as quickly as possible because success in our sport depends on that initial burst of raw power,” explains Willoughby.

Backing off
Willoughby admits he’s obsessive-compulsive about training and that this can lead to spells spent facedown on his bed beside blister packs of antibiotics. With Dwight in his ear, he’s trying to change. “As athletes we can get caught up in believing that every session is vital and must be nailed, but you have to see the bigger picture,” he says. “Instead of thinking that if it rains you’ll do this or that instead, maybe just put your feet up and recharge.”

Fuelling up
In the same vein, Willoughby tries not to agonise about food. From a home in which his mum cooked him three meals a day, he instinctively follows a rough paleo diet, though he will eat oats at breakfast and a little bread at lunch. “I’m constantly hungry and always eating something,” he says. “My cheat meal would be a burger and shake.” Well-earned, too.

Catch Willoughby at the BMX National Championships, held in Shepparton, from April 29. He’ll also be promoting Coca-Cola’s The Happiness Cycle, which donates bikes to young people.RELATED:
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