Canicross Training : Without a Dog

The allure of canicross lies in the shared activity with your dog, exercising together as a team.

This is the essence of canicross, bikejor, and other harness sports.

However, there’s an aspect that shouldn’t be overlooked: the potential to enhance your individual speed and strength.

When your dog is in harness and pulling you along, it’s easy to become dependent on their assistance, especially during challenging routes or uphill sections.

However, if you aim to improve and achieve personal goals or simply enhance your performance, investing time in training without your dog is essential, allowing them a break from pulling.

Solo training allows you to build on your foundation, refine your technique, whether in running, biking, skiing, or scootering.

Being alone lets you slow down and focus on technique, posture, and areas that need improvement.

Use these solo sessions to enhance your speed, agility, and power. Since harness sports encompass various terrains and conditions, becoming stronger, more agile, and faster will all help reduce your reliance on your dog when things get tough.

Harness sports demand mental resilience to endure elements and overcome fatigue. Solo training, pushing through challenging workouts, cultivates a stronger mindset not only for canicross but also for any other sport you participate in.

When working with your dog while they are not in harness, refine obedience and navigational commands like lefts, rights, slowing down, and speeding up. Work on their speed, endurance, and power. You can bike while they run. This is a great way to work on speed and endurance, take them hiking, and have them carry their supplies in a dog-friendly saddlebag.

Solo training offers a chance to scout new trails. Exploring unfamiliar paths without your dog being attached to you, not having your dog attached will give you an opportunity to go out and assess new terrain, enjoy the twists and turns, scout potential challenges, and everything else these new trails can offer, so when you do bring your dog, you will have an idea of what to expect.

The amount of solo training, off-leash training, and harness training is going to be different for everyone, and it will vary depending on the time of year.

In the summer (off-season), we prioritize off-leash training, ensuring both us and our dog stay active and in shape.

As the weather cools and the racing season approaches, we will increase our harness training frequency, but we are still doing our off-leash training as a supplement to harness work so they can build their strength and endurance out of harness as well.

Although canicross is undoubtedly a partnership between you and your dog, working on your own strength and training is only going to make your harness days that much more enjoyable, and you will be amazed on how much faster you will be as a team.

It’s a win-win for both you and your dog. You get to have an amazing time running with your dog, and they get to run faster without having to work as hard !

This is where having a running coach can be beneficial, they can help provide focus, guidance ,motivation and the training you need to help get you stronger and faster !