Rick Crawford has had extensive experience competing as a pro athlete, coaching endurance athletes and managing successful elite/pro level cycling programs in a career now spanning over 40 years. He has been involved with DTC since the very first camp and has returned every year to offer his expertise and to be enriched and inspired by the DTC team and campers. Crawford’s basic tenet is “work hard to understand the athlete, learn what makes them respond, and never stop working towards their ultimate potential.”
Crawford has an uncanny intuition to anticipate what his athletes need. He is constantly probing progressive training methodology and is not afraid to innovate to create programs that stimulate growth for his athletes. He realizes that athletes and their lives are dynamic, requiring programming that responds to an ever-changing environment. Crawford’s philosophy is anchored in fundamentals, always building the physiological base so it can support greater loads, employing progression and periodization, with the hub of his method being the ultimate respect for the role of the central nervous system as the governor of success.
Molding coaching programs to athletes’ real lives and their individual stresses create consistency and longevity, essentials to achieving potential. Comprehensive management of the whole athlete addresses all limits. Coach Crawford works with Open Sky Wilderness Therapy near cycling mecca Durango, Colorado, where he lives on a small farm with his wife of over 31 years and their three sons.
