Cognitive Performance and MTB Mindset Coaching
Master your mindset. Amplify your physical skills.
Online coaching sessions allow you to step back from the adrenaline of the trails, build practical, real-world strategies for reaching your goals, learn more about your unique strengths and how to build on them, and cultivate the mental skills to do more of what you love – in mountain biking, at work, and in life.
My collaborative, strengths-based approach is informed by years of research into skill acquistion and embodied cognition, national level racing experience, and neurotype-affirming coaching expertise. Sessions are designed to meet you where you are and build on your existing strategies to overcome the challenges that are getting your way of achieving your goals.
If you’re a mountain biker seeking a mental advantage or wanting to decrease overwhelm on the trails, or you’re an autistic or ADHD adult looking to deeply understand, embrace, and excel with your unique brain, or you want to improve your mind skills and resilience while supporting your own clients to do the same, these sessions are tailored to you.
Extra info below for people who like more detail. 🙂 Any questions, please get in touch.
Who I work with and how I can support you
My approach acknowledges that performance isn’t just about what’s in your head, but how your mind, body, environment, emotions and social context interact.
Mountain bikers: master your mindset, lift your physical performance
You juggle a lot and sport is your release. Whether you’re competing at the top, or enjoy time on the bike as part of a week full of other things, my MTB mind skills coaching helps you harness your mental game for peak performance, increased consistency under pressure and greater enjoyment.
Step away from the trails and learn mental skills that enable you to ride with intention, focus and control, and to understand more about processes you’ve relied on in the past but don’t fully understand.
For mountain bikers newer to the sport, and learning 1000 things at once, we can use these sessions to descrease feelings of overwhelm by tapping into proven strategies and wisdom used by riders at all levels in the sport. This will make you feel calmer and more methodical in your own process next time you’re out on the trails.
- Accelerate progress: My coaching saves you years of trial-and-error, helping you quickly gain the mental skills to achieve acheive your goals – whether that’s podium results, conquering challenging trails and/or keeping up with your friends!
- Boost confidence & accomplishment: Tap into your unique capabilities and feel more confident in your own process. Expand on that toolkit to experience the pride and euphoria of conquering new trail challenges and sharing your wins.
- Decrease overwhelm & anxiety: Learn to manage pressure, distractions, and the sensory demands of MTB, so you can stay calm and focused when it counts. This translates to less anxiety and fear, and more control. This allows you to ride harder trails, faster, and with less worry – saving you months worth of time and potential bike and physio bills.
Autistic and ADHD adults: understand, embrace and empower your brain for life, work and sport.
As a neurodiversity-affirming support coach with lived experience and additional study, I offer a unique skillset for understanding, embracing, and empowering your autistic, ADHD, or uniquely wired brain.
My coaching provides strategies that are built on contemporary neurodivergent-affirming understandings of strengths and challenges. Together we can create comfortable and adaptable strategies for you to thrive on and through the bike, and use this to support your experiences in other of your life: at work and study, in social contexts, and at home.
- Leverage your unique brain: Gain expanded knowledge about why certain techniques work for your brain, building confidence in your personalised processes, preferences and terrific strengths.
- Transform overwhelm into a happy calm and neurodivergent joy: Develop effective strategies for sensory, social, or cognitive overload, significantly reducing the intensity of stress and overwhelm. Add to this with robust recovery plans for when you need them so you more how you want to feel, more often.
- Navigate social & executive function challenges: Build practical tools for communication, planning, and focus, improving your energy levels and mental capacity, and reducing stress. Learn to support and trust your own process, and feel (and ride!) more how you want to, more often.
Performance & resilience coaching for yourself or your own clients: your path, your pace.
My broad skillset in embodied cognition, skill acquisition, and expert performance processes is grounded in the understanding that thinking and performance are deeply connected to your body, environment, and history. This means I’m uniquely equipped to support you with a strengths-based, collaborative approach to solving problems at work, in sport, and in life.
If you don’t fit in a neat box, or you want to support a client, colleague, or friend, or you want to learn more about how Intelligent Action research and principles offer increased capacity in your own context, we can design sessions to support you with these goals too.
- For coaches & workplace professionals: If you’re a mountain bike coach (or coach in any other sport) looking to better support clients or riders struggling with anxiety, fear, or expand their strategies for focus or racecraft, or if you’re a workplace professional seeking effective strategies to support neurodivergent colleagues in the workplace, I can help. Gain insights and practical approaches and create inclusive, effective strategies that allow more people to develop and excel.
- Develop an expanded toolkit of practical strategies for yourself: Build actionable, proven tools and approaches that you can consistently draw upon to overcome obstacles and unlock your full potential in any domain – on the bike, in other activities, at work, and in life. Understand the unique capacities that are the foundation of your own resilience and success, and expand on these for increased capacity and strategies to draw on in times of challenge.
What to expect in a session
Before your first session, you’ll be invited to fill in a document sharing what you’d like to discuss, work towards and/or learn more about.
Each session, held via Google Meet or phone, begins with you setting the agenda and guiding the conversation. You can choose between 50 or 80 minute sessions when you book. That extra ten minutes at the end allows me to collect and send any follow up resources we chat about in the session.
I will facilitate the discussion, drawing upon my expertise to help you explore your challenges. Together we’ll discover new insights and come up with strategies you can apply straight away for some quick wins, and others we can develop, test and refine over the longer term.
Toward the end of the session, we will synthesise key takeaways and identify three actionable steps to implement. This last part always sound a bit naff to ask for, but saying these things out loud is a surprisingly powerful and positive way to wrap a session and transition to whatever’s next in your day or your week!
See the FAQ below if you want to share the session (and cost) with a friend (or three!). We can divide the time so everyone gets a chance to talk while also learning about strategies that support each other. This is a popular option for mountain bikers.
What you’ll gain
- Increased confidence for methodically approaching mind-body-environment challenges.
- An expanded toolkit for managing and overcoming blocks, worries and overwhelm. This applies both personally and when working with others.
- A deeper understanding of your unique strengths, skills and potential, and how you can build on these.
- Personalised strategies for achieving your goals and taking intelligent action.
- Any resources we discuss in the session.
Testimonials
(I’ve kept these anonymous because not everybody wants their personal thoughts or challenges plastered all over the internet.)
“Kath is highly skilled and a good listener. She will always listen or see someone’s own way or approach then guide them.”
“Kath’s approach to coaching is very relatable and relaxed, with a gentle but real feel to it. She is able to tap into people’s inner negativity and make them realise it’s OK to not be the best or get something straight away. But gently!”
“I had a session with Kath for help with supporting a colleague with ADHD who’s been having a hard time at work. She helped me to understand a lot more about how they were experiencing things in the workplace and some of the things my colleagues and I had – or hadn’t – done that had led to some tricky situations. I left the session with a full list of strategies to draw on and felt a lot more confident in my own management and support style too.”
“Our session this week was incredibly helpful and affirming for me and I’m really keen to continue.”
“Kath has such good info about so many topics. She’s so passionate about lived experience and learning from what we’ve done well in the past.”
“I’d say it’s a great session for any level of rider – whether you’re just starting out or have been riding for years. There’s a really nice balance of practical takeaways and more reflective mindset work that gets you thinking differently about how you ride.”
“You’re a great listener and create such a chilled, supportive space that makes it easy to be honest, take a breath, and reset.”
“Really, really, really helpful.”
“I found it really interesting to think about riding a bike, instead of just riding a bike.”
“Kath has a very relaxed and positive mindset. She’s easy going, relatable and works with real scenarios.”
“Kath really helped me to clean up my thinking when I’m on the bike. Self talk is so powerful and she gave me the tools I needed to control my thoughts so that my riding experience was a positive one, focused on enjoyment followed by progress.”
“Knowing you’re neurodivergent and what we have in common gives me encouragement and courage…So relatable to see someone like me who can ride well, and who is transparent about themselves.”
“Dr Kath is an absolute boss lady! She’s got neuropower lived experience and formal qualifications to match.”
“Kath is so easy to talk to and made me feel super comfortable.”
“Your coaching style feels really grounded and thoughtful – like chatting with a friend who totally gets the mental ups and downs of riding. You give simple but powerful cues that actually stick, so when I’m out on the trail, I find myself coming back to those little mindset shifts. It’s helped me stay more focused, and be more present on the bike.”
FAQ
Can I do a session with a friend or a group?
Yes, we can run sessions with a maximum of four people. The cost will be the same as a single person session. To do this, you will need to email hello@intelligentaction.cc at the time of booking letting me know the names and email addresses of the people attending. Our current booking system is pretty simple, so one person will need to be responsible for payment and forwarding confirmation and reminder emails.
Why mountain bike mind skills training?
I’ve studied the ways mountain bikers and other athletes rely on a mix of focus and awarenes, and more automatic processes since 2007. Most people talk about managing anxiety, fear, and overthinking as the mental parts of riding they want to improve on. Our minds do so much more as well: choosing, deciding, remembering, predicting, anticipating, pacing, adapting, monitoring, strategising, planning…. There’s so much to be gained in terms of understanding how to use your mind to get more out of your time on the bike! I want to see more riders stoke, excited and really proud about how much their brains contribute to riding well.
How does your coaching work alongside MTB skills sessions out on the trails?
Think of these sessions as a way of stepping back from the trails, and understanding more about what your mind brings to riding well. This will help you expand your toolkit for higher pressure moments, troubleshoot aspects of riding that are causing blocks or holding you back, and to know how to regulate your thoughts with more focus, awareness and control.
Coaches running MTB skills sessions on trails around Australia have been some of the biggest supporters of Intelligent Action since we launched in 2023. Our methods complement each other well and support you in developing your mountain biking in different ways. I definitely recommend getting in touch with physical MTB skills coaches in your area to keep working on your technique and to meet other riders in your community.
Why autistic and ADHD support coach sessions?
When I was looking for coaching courses to formalise my approach to mental skills for mountain bikers, a certified neuro-divergent support coach course offered something differently beneficial to my PhD and skills coaching background in mountain biking. I love the strengths based approach of the neurodiversity-affirming movement (which I think a lot of other people can benefit from as well) and I wanted to formalise skills I’ve learned through lived experience and my academic background. As awareness of neurodivergent experiences and research grows, there’s a huge need for people to be able to process what this means for them, and how to apply it to overcome sensory, social, emotional and executive function challenges at home, in sport and at work.
I also believe that autistic and ADHD folk are much higher represented in mountain biking than in general population groups, whether that’s for the self and sensory regulation the sport provides, the way social interaction develops around a special interest or hyperfocus, differing attitudes and processes toward risk, the balance of joy/dopamine and repetition that moving through favourite trails provides and other fun factors. These traits can also mean different avenues for understanding, and preventing, overload and overwhelm.
Do I need an ADHD or autism diagnosis before booking a session with you?
No! Firstly, self diagnosis is valid and not everyone can afford a formal diagnosis.
Secondly, if you’re wondering if you fit various criteria, we can talk through that and look at the pros and cons of going through the diagnosis process. We can also explore strategies to draw on that are supportive in the meantime.
Do you do mindset coaching for people from other sports?
Yes, if you’re interested! Most of the techniques and concepts that I use to support mountain bikers also apply to people coordinating mind and body in other activities. What usually happens in these conversations is each person brings sport-specific insights and enthusiasm, but the point of connection is around skills that enable you to increase your mental skills.
Are you a health professional?
No. The Dr in my title is from a PhD in Performance Studies. As a support coach, my role is to provide you with strategies and tools you can use to understand mind-body-environment challenges and work toward your goals. I bring a supportive, encouraging, and collaborative style to coaching to help you uncover your own solutions and expand your toolkit for navigating challenges. It is not a substitute for clinical therapy.
What’s your cancellation policy?
Please note that as a *very* small business we have a strict cancellation policy.
If you need to change your booking time, you must do this 48 hours before the session. Except in the case of an emergency, failing to rebook before this time or failing to turn up for the session means you forfeit the session.
Please also note that by confirming your booking, you agree to our Terms and Conditions.
Contact us at hello@intelligentaction.cc if you have any queries.
I have more questions! Why aren’t they here too?!
Contact us at hello@intelligentaction.cc or via the contact page on this website. Chances are someone else might be wondering the same thing, so your question also helps us to keep this page updated for anyone else.
About Kath Bicknell
Kath is a researcher, writer and educator with a deep connection to cycling. With over 16 years’ experience in academia spanning performance studies, cognitive science, and anthropology, she brings a unique perspective to skill learning and expert performance. Her research, including a PhD on the lived experience of mountain biking, focuses on real-world training and performance techniques and individual processes for excelling under pressure. She worked as skills coach with Australian Mountain Bike clinics during her studies.
Whether its racing, riding with friends, or enjoying the lifestyle aspects of MTB, the sport has been a central part of Kath’s life for 25 years. She lives with several invisible disabilities including Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). These have driven her professional interests in minds, bodies, and movement, and her inclusive approach to teaching and coaching.
Kath has shared her expertise through hundreds of articles for national and international cycling media, including six years with SBS Sport, her ‘Mind, Body, Bike’ column for Australian Mountain Bike, peer-reviewed journals and a co-edited book with John Sutton, Collaborative Embodied Performance: ecologies of skill. Kath founded Intelligent Action in 2023, offering personalised performance and resilience training through courses, workshops, and neurotype-affirming coaching.
Ready to get started?
My online one-on-one coaching sessions are designed to provide focused, personalised support. If you’d like to know more, or find out whether a coaching session is for you, please get in touch.
Intelligent Action 