Mountain Bike Fitness

As much as we would all love to ride our bikes all day, every day it simply doesn’t happen for 99.99% of us. If we could ride that much, it would wear our bodies out and we’d get burnt out anyhow. However, when you miss riding for a few days or a week you come back and your legs suddenly don’t work, your lungs won’t hold air and any rhythm you might once have had is gone.


One combat for this is to increase your fitness routine off the bike so when you do ride, you’re in hammer-time form. Yes, it still takes time, but without having to deal with traffic to get to the trails you can commit to doing something physical everyday. Since I am not one to waste time doing something strenuous if it doesn’t work, I have scoured the internet for mountain bike specific fitness regiments and exercises to find out what is the best use of the little time each of us have.

Hit the jump to read on...



Core:

This should be at the “core” of any mountain biker’s fitness regimen. Having a strong core not only helps you breathe better but it helps you maintain bike control and stay balanced. “The core is important because it is the center of your body and if it is weak it will affect everything else” says James Wilson, who started MTB Strength Training Systems and is the trainer for Team Yeti and pro all rounder Ross Schnell. Crunches are bogus for many reasons, so check out these core workouts recommended by various fitness gurus.

Glute Bridge

Plan

Side Plank

Bird Dog

Core Crunchers

The first four can be seen here.

The core crunchers as well as a few other fitness ball exercises can be found here.


Strength Training:

Still measuring your bench press max against your buddy’s? Go back to the Jersey Shore and get real. It doesn’t do squat (you should do those!) for your riding and that’s what really matters. Instead, do these twelve and notice how many of them also work your core. If you are unsure how to do any of them, there are videos abound online. These 12 were featured in Decline Magazine and are again the work of James Wilson.


-Deadlift

-Front Squat

-Single Leg Deadlift

-Single Leg Squat

-Turkish Get Up (You’ll get stares from this one!)

-Bulgarian Split Squat

-Single Arm Dumbbell Bench Press on Stability Ball

-Split Stance Shoulder Press

-Push Ups (including more difficult variations like T Push Ups and Stability Ball Push Ups)

-Chin Ups

-Inverted Rows

-Single Arm Inverted Rows

James also has a MTB specific Dumbell Workout and Ultimate workout available for purchase on his website. Anyone who has commented on it online has nothing but great things to say about the results and starting at only 27 bucks, it costs less than a new tire.

Flexibility:

This is so important for everything our bodies do and if you are not flexible, your body will compensate for that in a variety of ways; all of which are bad. Most mountain bikers have tight hips, so that is a great place to start as well as your quads. Maybe that yoga session your significant other has been bothering you about would be good after all. If you aren’t into getting down like a pretzel in public, check out a few of the stretches shown on http://www.abc-of-fitness.com/; its animations and descriptions are the best I’ve found.