Strength and conditioning for mountain bike athletes.
Why strength train?
There are many reasons why mountain bikers should incorporate strength work into their training. This doesn’t have to be at a gym as there is still plenty you can do from home with minimal or no equipment. For females, beyond improved performance on the bike, there is no better feeling than being strong. The ability to lift heavy things or open jars for the hubby is both empowering and quite satisfying. I’ve put together a few of my top reasons as to why you need to strength train.
To correct muscle imbalances and reduce injuries.
Biking is a repetitive movement, pedalling, within a limited range of motion. You are holding basically the same position for long periods of time. This leads to certain muscles being over developed (eg. quads), while others are weak (eg. lower back, the entire upper body). This can result in a lack of mobility (eg. shoulders), tightness (eg. hip flexors) or soreness (eg. lower back, upper back) and increased risk of injury. A targeted strength training program helps to correct these imbalances, improve mobility and reduce injury risk.
For a strong core.
Your core is involved in everything on the bike for both climbing and descending. A strong core is even more important for balance on the bike and stability on constantly changing terrain in mountain biking. Given core strength is your entire torso this is also essential to prevent injuries.
So you can send it.
You need to be strong enough to descend on terrain that is rough, varied and incredibly physical. This goes for all mountain bike disciplines. All of the vibrations that go through your bike will be going through the points at which you are connected to it. Your arms and legs act as additional shock absorbers to dampen vibrations to protect your central nervous system - in other words, so you don’t rattle your brain. Being strong will improve your fatigue resistance to these constant vibrations when descending on trails.
Think about the position that you are in when descending. This is very similar to a press-up position. how many full press-ups can you do? How many can you do when you’re gassed from race pace? When landing off drops and jumps, can you land in a strong body position, absorbing that landing and then repeating? Or will you collapse onto your bike? Female riders in particular can get some big gains here by improving their upper body strength.
So you can be powerful.
Strength applied at speed = power!
In a very basic way of putting it, if you are stronger, you can put more force through the pedals. Do this at speed and you have power or explosive power.
All mountain bike disciplines require power. In DH you need to explode out of the start gate. Enduro you want an explosive start from standing. This is followed by repeated sprints until the finish line or end of stage wher eyou need to be able to put down the power.
Modern XCO courses are highly technical and punchy. You need to be able to produce repeated powerful bursts for climbing up and over technical features, over-taking other riders, sprinting off the start line for entry into the single track and sprint finishes.