How To Work Around An Injury With Your MTB Training Program.

Mountain biking is a great sport but it also isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a tough, grinding activity that demands a level of toughness from the people who do it that no other cycling sport does.

A drawback to being tough, though, is not paying enough attention to injuries. Ignoring injuries or using painkillers like Tylenol to mask them isn’t an effective long term strategy. 

You also don’t want to use injuries as an excuse to stop training and do nothing. If you want to ride for a lifetime then you need to know how to effectively work around them when they do pop up.

You can learn more about how to work around an injury in the video I shot last week sharing the strategies I’ve used with countless riders to help them recover faster while minimizing their strength and fitness losses. 

I’ve got the show notes below and a link to the livestream replay and the audio file from it as well. You‌ ‌can‌ also ‌find‌ ‌it‌ ‌on‌ ‌‌Itunes‌,‌‌ ‌Podbean‌,‌‌ ‌‌Spotify‌‌ ‌‌and‌ ‌all‌ ‌other‌ ‌major‌ ‌podcasting‌ ‌platforms.‌ ‌

There is a lot of value in continuing to train with an injury.

• The injury can heal faster.
• You can minimize the loss of strength in the injured area.

Two types of injuries.

• Acute: something happens that immediately injures something (crashing and busting up a shoulder)
• Overuse: something adds up over time and creates an injury (bad mobility and movement causing some sort of -itus in your shoulder)

We should be able to avoid or minimize overuse injuries with good training habits - if you’re hurt it doesn’t matter how fit you are.

Acute injuries are part of the game and will pop up from time to time.

No matter what type of injury you have, make sure you are following your medical caregivers advice.

In general you want to avoid pain so don’t do anything that causes the injured area to hurt, either in the moment or after the activity.

Painkillers like tylenol and ibuprofen can be used for short periods and should not be a regular part of your strategy.

If you have an overuse injury you need to figure out the problem that is causing it and fix it.

• The problem is usually a non-painful, dysfunctional joint immediately above or below the painful area.
• Remember the old Stable - Mobile joint stacking model (stable joints on top of mobile joints on top of stable joints, etc.)
• You may need to cut back on your weight and volume to affect the type of change needed to improve movement patterns (used early in off season to fix problems and optimize future training)

If you have an acute injury you need to do what you can while working around it.

• The mistake most people make with this is to try and see how much they can do before causing a problem and they often go over the line, setting back the recovery time. 
• The better strategy is to do everything you can to heal as fast as you can so you can get back to normal training ASAP.

No matter what type of injury you have, isometrics should play a big role in your recovery.

• You’ll be able to do isometrics before you can do loaded movements.
• Isometric strength = Stability, which is often lacking when people first come back from an injury.

If you want to minimize your injuries then make sure you have a good strength and mobility program as part of your overall strategy. The Ultimate MTB Workout Program is the best option for the rider that wants it all and the Atomic Strength Program is the best option for the rider who wants a minimalist training program that still delivers results.

Knowing how to work around injuries is just part of the process of riding for a lifetime, especially if you want to keep performing at a decent level. Hopefully this post has given you some tools to help you do that.

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson

MTB Strength Training Systems