The Riding For A Lifetime Podcast

Skills Training for Mountain Biking

I’ve been around long enough to see a real change in the way most riders think about Skills Training. When I first started riding mountain bikes almost 15 years ago Skills Training wasn’t something I had ever heard of, much less considered an important thing for me to do.

Fast forward to the end of 2014 and Skills Training has become extremely popular. Thousands of riders every year are attending some sort of skills training class or camp. Hundreds of thousands more are watching free Skills Training videos online.

Almost every serious mountain biker now recognized the importance that improving their skills on the trail can play in improving their fun and safety on the trail.

But this also means that a lot of riders are pretty frustrated with their lack of progress in that department as well. It seems that despite more riders than ever knowing “what” to do most riders I talk with still struggle to apply it consistently.

The problem is that these riders are trying to build their skills on a weak foundation. By not addressing the physical qualities needed to improve their skills they can’t get much further.

In the last part of my 5 Fundamental Elements of a Mountain Bike Training Program podcast series I explain how you can avoid this problem and avoid the frustration that comes with not being able to consistently improve your skills on the trail.

Here are the notes from this episode:

- Improving your skills can increase your speed, endurance, safety and “flow” on the trail.

- Skills Training works on being able to apply good movement while on the bike to maintain good balance on the trail.

- It ultimately boils down to a relationship between your center of gravity and your bikes center of gravity.

- If you can’t move well (Flexibility), you can’t produce adequate tension (Strength), you can’t easily do it with speed and power (Speed) and you can’t fuel it (Endurance) then you won’t see much progression with your Skills Training.

- Trouble with executing a skill is usually because you lack a fundamental movement or prerequisite skill, not because you don’t know what to do. Trying to learn how to corner before you really own your Body Position is a good example.

- Beware of “quick fixes” or advice based on a symptom of good technique instead of focusing on the cause of good technique. “Elbows Out” and “Outside Foot Down” are good examples of focusing on symptoms instead of causes.

- Learning how to make the mental connection between how you move in the gym and how you move on the bike is important to getting the most out of your program. This doesn’t mean that exercises have to look like what you do on the bike, though.

- There are 5 basic trail skills you need to work on.

1 – Body Position: This is your ability to achieve and maintain a strong, balanced body position on the bike with either foot forward (regular and switch-foot). It relates to your Horizontal Push and Hip Hinge movement pattern.

2 – Standing Pedaling: This is your ability to stand up and achieve a strong, balanced standing pedaling position. It is related to you Squat movement pattern.

3 – Seated Pedaling: This is your ability to achieve and maintain optimal position while sitting down to pedal. It is related to your Horizontal Push and Hip Hinge movement pattern.

4 – Manualing: This is your ability to use your hips to shift your weight back and lift from the end of your bike. It is the cornerstone skill for other skills like Bunny Hopping and Jumping. It is related to your explosive Hip Hinge movement pattern and requires excellent Body Position.

5 – Cornering: This is your ability to maintain optimal balance and position through a corner. It is related to your lateral Hip Hinge and requires excellent Body Position.

- This is also the order I advise that you focus on the skills. Take 4-6 weeks and focus on one skill before moving on.

- Use parking lot drills to help with the basics and use Skills Focus Rides to apply it all to the trail.

- Use flat pedals when trying to learn a new skill or push the envelope with a current skill to push it to the next level.

- You can’t learn how to do it all in a weekend, Skills Training is a lifelong pursuit that requires focus and a plan.

It is important to understand how you can improve your skill development by filling in the movement and fitness gaps that are really holding you back. And once you see how your fitness and your skills are interconnected it starts to put training into a new perspective.

A good mountain bike training program should improve your fitness and your skills. And the only way to do that is to make sure you have the 5 Fundamental Elements of a Mountain Bike Training Program covered in way that meets our needs on the trail.

With the advice you’ve gotten from this podcast and the rest of them in this series I hope you’ll be able to better do just that.

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson

Endurance Training for Mountain Biking

Endurance Training is by far the favorite subject of mountain bikers everywhere. No matter what they ride or where they are from, more riders want to know how to improve their endurance than just about anything else.

And for good reason. Endurance Training is the most specific of all of the physical qualities you can train and represents the pinacle of the Sports Specific Triangle. It don’t matter how much flexibility, strength or speed you have if you can’t sustain it on the trail where it matters most.

But this has also lead to a lot of confusion about Endurance Training, especially as it relates specifically to us as mountain bikers. Like I’ve pointed out before, the term “cyclist” is usually just a code word for “road riding” and no where does this matter more than when picking an Endurance Training Program.

In this new podcast I go over everything you need to know about Endurance Training for mountain biking. You’ll learn why it isn’t the same thing as cardio training, what the most valuable cardio training you can do is and some tips to help you pick the right Endurance Training program for you.

Endurance Training is the most important part of your training program but it has to be built on a solid foundation of flexibility, strength and speed. You also have to make sure you aren’t falling into the trap of doing more and more cardio instead of focusing on improving the quality of the cardio you are doing.

When you get it right, though, the right approach to Endurance Training can make a huge impact on your riding. Hopefully the info and tips in this podcast will help you find the right approach for you.

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson

Speed Training for Mountain Biking

Speed Training is an interesting topic for mountain biking because it isn’t really a part of many programs. Early on in training mountain bikers I realized that few of them had the ability to truly “tap into 100%” and that this was holding them back in a lot of different ways.

Speed Training isn’t just doing some intervals as part of your cardio program and needs to be looked at and trained as a separate element. It can help improve your endurance, help you more easily power through tough efforts on the trail and as well as help you get faster when you need to lay down some power to the pedals.

As you can see, it can do a lot for you and should be part of your program this off-season. But if you’re like most riders you probably have a few questions like how is Speed Training different from just doing some intervals and what is the best way to use it as a mountain biker.

And that is why I put this podcast together for you. In it you’ll learn more about how Speed Training can help you as a rider and how you can use it to improve your speed and endurance on the trail.

Here are the notes from this podcast…

- Most sports have a speed training aspect where they focus on the ability to quickly produce power in the shortest amount of time possible.

- It requires the ability to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible while also maintain the most efficient postures and movement patterns.

- This ability to tap into 100% is a skill most mountain bikers lack and so they are waste a lot of energy when they try to do it on the trail.

- Speed training helps us tap into more muscle fibers which, like strength training, makes more of them available for endurance.

- Speed training also reinforces proper posture and movement habits since speed increases the stress on the system, magnifying the cracks that don’t show up as much at slower speeds.

- While most people think of fast movements for speed training, trying to move a heavy load quickly also results in improved power and speed.

- This is important because we need this ability to quickly push against resistance to sprint or grind through a higher gear – a lot of trail riding takes place below 80 rpms and this needs to be trained.

- Speed can be trained on the bike or in the gym with power exercises like the Swing, DB Cheat Curl and Push Press. These are especially useful for working on “high tension” speed.

- While power is a huge part of speed it isn’t the same thing as Power Training.

- Speed training and speed endurance training are different and need to be trained differently.

- Speed training requires a relatively fresh nervous system for maximum muscle recruitment.

- Speed endurance training should focus on maintaining a certain speed/ effort level instead of just surviving the workout.

- Start with working to improve your speed early in the off-season before working on speed endurance closer to the riding season.

- In general, anything over 60 seconds isn’t Speed Training and is starting to get into Endurance Training.

- Speed Training is going to be relative to the distance you usually ride with longer distance riders able to use longer sprints.

- Every riders should spend some time working on true speed with intervals less than 10 seconds.

- Unless you are a 4X/ Dual Slalom rider then Speed Training shouldn’t be a big part of your program, perhaps 1-2 days a week for 8-12 weeks in the off-season and 1 session every 7-14 days during the season. But it is an important part of your training program and without it you have a gap in your fitness which will effect everything else.

As you can see Speed Training can help you in a lot of different ways so make sure you aren’t neglecting it this off-season. If you have any questions or thoughts about Speed Training for mountain biking be sure to leave a comment below, I’d love to hear them.

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson