Rebecca Petch warming up for last year's Red Bull Pump track world champs in Cambridge. “It’s my role to take the lead from Matt depending on what phase Bec is in her training to develop her athleticism on the bike.”įor the last five years, Petch and Paterson have ground away in the Avantidrome gym developing her from a Pathway to Podium junior rider to an elite rider off to her first Olympic Games in Tokyo. “That’s where Matt and I work together to make sure she’s not going to get too cooked. “We have to rein her in at times because she wants to train hard all the time. “It’s a real privilege to work with someone so humble and hard working as Bec,” he says. Paterson, who works for High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ), reckons working with Petch has been so rewarding because of her work ethic and her thoughtfulness to thinking about training - why each exercise matters. It’s the kindness Paterson has shown to her – both as an athlete and as a person - that Petch says makes their bond so special. Whereas now ‘I’m like stuff it, we have to do this’,” she admits. “Last year, if I was scared of jumping a jump at the track I would almost break down in tears. Petch, who’s been racing since she was three, backs that up. “For a long time we’ve talked about Bec having more swagger simply because we believe in her and we want her to believe in herself more,” he says. The mental muscle Petch has grown, says Paterson, has been “significant”. “If we can get Bec to the front, out of the traffic, into the first turn into the lead… there’s every chance she can maintain that position.”īut the building of the three-time national BMX champion’s power and optimal cadence (a measure of high speed power) hasn’t been all she’s developed. Rebecca Petch with strength and conditioning coach Shaun Paterson (left) and BMX coach Matt Cameron.
“Bec is one of the better athletes in New Zealand. Together they’ve been working on her strength in the gym, which has progressed to the point where she is able to nearly dead-lift three times her bodyweight the 63kg rider’s current best is 173kg. Working alongside Petch’s BMX coach, former elite rider Matt Cameron, Paterson’s role is to help the 23-year-old be explosive, with the priority on “making Bec as strong as humanly possible in the first five pedal strokes.” They’re sitting alongside each other in the café at the Avantidrome in Cambridge, where they crank out demanding training sessions in the gym most days. She’s talking about Shaun Paterson, her long-term strength and conditioning coach. I wouldn’t be as good if I didn’t have Shaun.” “So, I wouldn’t be good if I didn’t go to the gym to be strong and powerful.
“If you’re strong and powerful out of the gate in BMX you get yourself out of the traffic early,” she says. And that’s something Olympic-bound BMX rider Rebecca Petch, and those around her, are acutely aware of. It’s the first five pedal strokes that make the difference. Rebecca Petch, who's taken over from Sarah Walker as our BMX Olympic medal hope, has made a huge jump ahead in power thanks to her strength and conditioning coach, Shaun Paterson, as Sarah Cowley Ross discovers in our Olympic Bonds series. Olympics Olympic Bonds: Rebecca Petch and her power coach