“How do we get more girls on bikes?” Molly gets emails, DMs and Facebook messages like this all the time from parents and coaches, and it’s an excellent question… but a hard one to answer. It’s something that we ponder all the time–it’s actually the question that Molly was asking that prompted writing the Shred Girls books in the first place! (You can read more about the Shred Girls ‘origin story’ here.)
Over on the Shred Girls site, Molly shared a few ideas and we wanted to bring them to the Consummate Athlete community as well, since we know many of you are parents and coaches and cycling advocates yourselves!
Here’s the first tip:
Meet girls where they are
I mean this is two ways. First, if you’re trying to get more girls on bikes in your area, look for girls who already might love biking if they find out about it. School sports are a great place to start, since cycling programs often run during the summer when coaches would actually love it if their athletes were doing some cross-training. And then, the second part is meeting non-athletic girls where they are, which was the point of the Shred Girls books. Most girls (my younger self included) have no idea that cycling is even a sport, or that it’s an awesome way to have fun outside. That’s where sharing books like Lindsay’s Joyride and Ali’s Rocky Ride can be helpful, sharing Instagrams or articles on here about awesome other girls who shred, showing them YouTube videos of women doing awesome things on bikes… basically, show girls that riding bikes is an option and show them just how awesome it is!
Read the rest of the article and get more parent + coach resources on the Shred Girls site here:
And if you have young girls in the Collingwood area, we are running a weekly Shred Girls clinic in the late spring—get the details here!
