Get a coach
Get a coach
Another luxury afforded to professionals is a dedicated coach, something Stewart – himself an amateur in the not-too-distant past – wishes he had taken on sooner.
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Currently coached by 11-time ‘British best all-rounder’ Kevin Dawson, Stewart believes a coach can help any amateur get more out of their training hours.
“What a coach does is make your training more efficient,” he says. “If you go out on your bike but you’re not fully sure it’s the right thing – even though it probably will be – you will find you won’t commit to it 100 per cent.
“If you’ve got a coach telling you, then it just reinforces that. It just motivates you a bit more. From an amateur’s point of view, my only regret is that I didn’t get a coach sooner.
“There’s a lot of advice there from nutrition to diet, how not to get ill and all that. I think, from my own experience with amateurs, that they end up doing too much.
“A coach can get you to back off a little but do sessions more tailored to what your goals are. I’d definitely recommend it. It can be expensive, but it depends what your ambitions are and if you can afford to do it then you should do.”