Getting better at mountain biking is one of the harder

things to do in the sports world. Unlike most sports that only require one or

two skills or fitness qualities, riding a bike on dirt requires a lot more.

Riding faster, longer and with more confidence on the trail

requires you to juggle not only cardio training but also mobility, strength and

skills training. None of these things are optional and only by having them all

in your plan can you really hope to see dramatic results.

This is why having a system to help you make sure that you

are focusing on the right things at the right time is important. There are a

lot of different ways to improve but without knowing the right questions to ask

and how to answer them you can easily make a bad decision.

Yesterday I held my latest webinar where I shared my FPI

System of Program design. FPI stands for Focus, Progression and Integration and

it shows you how I filter new information into the right “buckets” and how I

choose which bucket works best for me at that time.

In it I shared…

- Why it is important to have a system to filter new

information in today’s Information Age

- How to make sure that your plan is focused on your needs

- Two ro three reasons why riding a road bike is a bad idea

for mountain biking and the simple solution that will give you much better

results

- Why your brain is the most important thing to consider

when looking at a training plan

- Why pedaling based fitness gets overrated and why you need

other ways to work on your cardio

…plus much more.

After the presentation I answered some great questions about

assessing your skills level, what a training block looks like and why the

something as simple as kettlebell training can give you better results this off

season than another winter spending countless hours on a trainer.

You can download the slides from this webinar by clicking

the link below:

FPI System of Prorgam Design Webinar Slides

Ride Strong,

James Wilson

MTB Strength Training Systems

I have a confession to make.

This may surprise you to hear but the truth is that I am

kind of lazy. I mean, I’m not wanting to just sit on the couch watching

television and eating Oreos…at least not all day…but I really don’t like to work

hard for no reason.

But this also motivates me. Yes, I know that being “motivated

by my laziness” is an oxymoron but somehow it works out.

I think that this is because

even though I am kind of lazy I still don’t want to get my ass kicked. I

like to be good at the things I spend time doing – like mountain biking - and

to make up for my unwillingness to work like a dog all day long I try to think

my way to making the most out of the time I do spend working and training.

Enter the “hack”. Hacking is a popular term these days and

it basically represents a way of approaching things by working smarter instead

of harder. You do this by finding the right things to focus your time and

effort on so that you can get most of the results in much less time.

At its core my entire coaching career has been motivated by finding these hacks and applying them to my

own training and then to the training of my clients and customers.

I certainly don’t have a ton of time to train – not when you

factor in family, work, riding and some other hobbies on the side. And from the

feedback I get from other riders neither do they.

So to help myself and the riders I work with through my

prorgams get the most out of their training time I apply what I call BioPower

Hacks.

Now first, like I explained in

this previous blog post, Biological Power is a new and improved way to look

at Endurance Training. Instead of focusing almost exclusively on one factor –

cardio training – Biological Power takes into account all of the ways your body

both produces and uses energy to create

power.

Understanding how this concept applies to improving your

mountain bike fitness and skills is the key to making the most out of your

training time. Only by integrating all 4

systems that make up Biological Power can you hope to have the best program

possible.

Which is why knowing how to hack into your Biological Power –

or BioPower as I call it – is the key to having the best training program possible

to fit your lifestyle. The less time you have the more of these hacks we can

apply to squeeze the most out of the time we have.

And for the first

time ever I’m sharing these BioPower Hacks with you. I use these principles

to help guide the training programs I write for riders as varied as World Cup

XC Pros to weekend riders who just want to have more fun and stop being the

last one on group rides.

In this new webinar I tell you…

- Why riding a road bike

in the off season will actually slow your BioPower transfer to the trail

- Why your brain is

the most important thing to consider when creating your training program

- How to get the most

transfer from strength training to the trail

- How hard and how

often to ride to get the best results

- How to structure

your rides based on your discipline

- Tons of Enduro

Racing specific tips and strategies (they just seemed to keep coming up)

- The #1 reason that riders

don’t see the results from their training program

- Why controling your

arousa

Last week I held a webinar going over Advanced Mountain Bike

Core Training and how you can use specific exercises to improve your core

strength and riding. It was a lot of fun and I had riders from all over the

world register and tune in to the live presentation. In it I shared a lot of

great info, some of which I’ve never presented before.

I started off with a short presentation answering some very

important questions including…

- What is “core training”?

- What is the real job of the core on the bike?

- What is the one critical area that is almost always

overlooked when talking about the core?

- How is core strength and grip strength related?

- Why will your mobility gaps will have a big effect on your

real world core strength?

- What are the main core strength gaps that mountain bikers

need to address?

- What are the best exercises to address those gaps?

After going over the presentation I then demonstrated the 3

exercises I’ve found target the main core strength gaps most mountain bikers

have. I showed everyone how to do each exercise while also explaining how to

get the most out of the movement and how to avoid common mistakes.

While I’m new to the webinar thing and I need to polish up a

few things I thought the overall presentation went great and everyone came away

from it with some great fuel for thought and exercises to start using. And in

case you missed it I’ve got the replay ready for you to check out.

You can download the slides from this webinar by clicking here.

Riding a wheelie can be a tough thing to learn for a lot of

riders. I mean, if you don’t learn it as a kid then it can be hard to pick it up

later in life on a mountain bike. It is one of those skills that I still

struggle with and I get a lot of questions from riders looking for advice on

how to learn it.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a great resource that I could

turn to myself or recommend to others. Sure, you could Google it and find a

bunch of videos and advice but there wasn’t something to guide you through the

actual process of learning how to wheelie.

Luckily for us, though, that’s exactly the problem my friend

Ryan Leech set out to solve. Ryan is an expert trials rider and all around

mountain biking bad ass that set the standard for technical riding for years

through films like the Kranked series and countless other appearances in the

media.

Ryan is also uniquely qualified to provide a guide through

the process of learning wheelies. He struggled with them at first, which forced

him to learn the process instead of relying on natural talent. Ryan also

credits learning to do a wheelie with helping him become the rider the is

today, giving him the confidence that he could learn to do anything on his

bike.

Ryan is also a skills coach who has also taught countless

riders the basics of a wheelie but he always felt something was lacking…he knew

what riders really needed was a system instead of a single lesson. So he

created the 30 Day Wheelie

Challenge in which he shows you his 30 day system for learning to wheelie.

Ryan’s mission is simply to help more riders experience the

“joy of doing a wheelie” so he agreed to come back on the podcast to share some

of his top tips and strategies for helping you to learn this elusive skill. If

you’re looking for a place to get started with learning to wheelie then this

podcast is a great place to start. You’re bound to learn something from a truly

wheelie master like Ryan that can help you.

In this new podcast I ask him…

- Why would I want to be able to ride a wheelie?

- What is the #1 thing you think rider’s don’t realize about

doing a wheelie?

- What are your top 3 tips for doing a wheelie?

- Are then any equipment tips you have for learning to

wheelie?

- How long will it really take before I can do a wheelie

with confidence?

- What’s the story behind the 30 Day Wheelie Challenge?

- Why did you set it up the way you did with a lesson a day

for 30 days vs. a regular manual?

And if you are interested in the 30 Day Wheelie Challenge

then click here to sign up for

only $30. That gives you unlimited access to not only the 30 day plan but

also Ryan himself, who answers any questions you might have along the way. Its

pretty cool that you can have access Ryan’s expertise and experience to help

you along the way and I highly recommend this program.

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson

MTB Strength Training Systems

Last weekend I had the chance to attend a new fitness event,

the Strength Matters Summit. Headlined by the likes of Dan John, Steve Maxwell,

Mark Reifkand, Dave Whitely, Perry Nickelstein and a whole host of “who’s who”

in the strength and conditioning world, it was a great chance to learn what

some of the best in the world have been up to lately.

Held in sunny San Diego, it was a great time with some great

people. The driving force behind Strength Matters are some great geys from

England who have  great vision for what

they are trying to do with the summit. In a world full of entry level courses

and seminars, Strength Matters is trying to stand out as a source of advanced

level info for coaches who have spent more than a few years producing results.

Add it all up and it was an even I was really looking

forward to and one that certainly did not disappoint. I came away with pages of

notes and some really big “aha moments” that will help me create even better

training programs. I also met some great people and got introduced to the art

of nail bending and tearing a deck of cards in half.

In this podcast I review my weekend and share my notes and

thoughts from the presenters. There were some great lessons about how to create

great habits, how the big toe and obliques are the key to your power and why

you need to massage your breathing muscles among many others. If you’re

interested in the best training methods to help you improve your strength and

cardio then this is one you don’t want to miss.

If you are in the fitness field of are interested in the

latest and best strength and conditioning info you should also check out the

Strength Matters website at www.strengthmatter.tv.

They have an excellent podcast as well as some other great resources that I use

myself.

That’s it for now, I just got back from a Dan John seminar

so I’m sure I’ll have some great stuff to share from it as well. Until then…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson

MTB Strength Training Systems

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 B

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 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

Strength Training has a long and interesting history in the world of sports. It wasn’t long after people started competing with each other that they figured out lifting heavy stuff made it easier to beat your opponent. From ancient Greeks to Roman Gladiators to the modern super-athlete, getting stronger has played a role in the success of countless athletes through the ages.But while getting stronger has long been recognized as a way to get better at your sport there are still a lot of riders who are confused about how to best use it. And no wonder – you can hear a lot of conflicting and confusing advice.On one hand you have those who tell us that strength training isn’t important and that you don’t need it. They say that there is no proof that getting stronger helps your performance on the trail. Some go so far as to claim that it can actually decrease your performance.On the other hand you have those who tell you that Strength Training is one of the most important things you can do as a rider. They say that you need to focus a lot of your time and energy in the gym getting stronger. Some of these people go so far as to focus most of a rider’s time and energy trying to build a better mountain biker in the gym.So which is it? Do you need to avoid strength training or do you need to focus a lot of time and energy on it? What are the real advantages of it for us as riders? And how do you make the best use of it this off-season?Well, I’m glad you asked. In this podcast I answer those questions and more, giving you the lowdown on why you should strength train and how to get maximum transfer from the gym to the trail.In this podcast I cover…1 – Myths and misunderstandings about Strength Training.    - What is Strength Training?    - Does strength training improve our performance?    - How much time and energy should you devote to strength training?2 – Benefits of Strength Training.    - It teaches the body to move more efficiently.    - It allows the body to access more motor units for Speed/ Power and Endurance training.    - It is one of the best ways to prevent overuse injuries.3 – How to use Strength Training as a mountain biker.    - Focus on training the basic human movements and filling in gaps.    - Focus on improving your 80% efforts instead of constantly hammering the 100%.    - Don’t turn strength training into cardio training.    - Basic workout template and periodization schemes (Rep Ladders, 5/3/2, Complex Circuits)There’s a ton of great info in this podcast, you’ll learn all of my top Strength Training tips and strategies to help you develop the strength base this off-season that you need to ride strong all season long. If you have any questions about Strength Training or about off-season training in general please feel free to post them below, I’m here to help out if I can. And in my next post I’ll go over Power/ Speed Training. The ability to quickly recruit your muscles in a highly coordinated manner is essential to being able to pick up speed quickly or power over obstacles. In other words, being able to tap into and repeat a true 100% effort, which is something a lot of riders seem to struggle with on the trail.Until next time…Ride Strong,James WilsonMTB Strength Training Systems