3 Surprising Things That Can Improve Your Cardio

Everyone wants to improve their cardio and a lot of riders invest time and money following programs to help them do that. While things like intervals and steady state cardio are well known things that can help improve your cardio, there are other things that can help that most riders don’t know about.

Over the last few years I've been diving into the science behind some other training methods that have been shown to improve your cardio and endurance on the trail. These things don’t get the press that other methods do right now but as more evidence to their benefit comes out you can be sure you’ll be hearing about them more. 

But you don’t have to wait, you be ahead of the curve and get an advantage on your riding buddies/ competition that don’t use these methods yet. If you want to maximize the results of your cardio training program you should consider including these things as well.

I shot a Live Stream going into this subject in depth and this podcast is the audio replay from it. You can find the show notes below:

1. Isometrics
   1. Great way to learn how to apply proper breathing to different levels of tension in important positions.
   2. Increases the enzymes responsible for aerobic metabolism.
   3. The highest level of High Tension Cardio you can achieve.
2. Breathwork/ Breathing Drills
   1. One study found that you could double your results from a cardio training program simply by adding in some breathing drills. 
3. Breath Hold Cardio
   1. Doing breath hold cardio can improve CO2 tolerance, EPO -> Red Blood Cells -> Hematocrit Levels, the strength of the respiratory muscles, and the buffering of lactic acid.
4. Bonus - Strength Training if you aren’t doing it
   1. When done right, strength training should be making you a more efficient mover, which means you will burn less energy for the same amount of effort.

If you want an easy way to start applying these things to your training program be sure to check out the Atomic Strength Isometrics Program and the Better Breathing For MTB Program. Both can give you the tools you need to take your cardio and performance to a level you can’t get to without them.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments about this post and I hope that it gave you some new things to think about as you get ready for the off season.

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson

MTB Strength Training Systems