Mountain Bikes For sale

Before entering your next mountain bike event, you may want to think about your goals for the race. Is it to place first in your age group, or be in the top 10? Maybe it's to improve your time from last year's race, or finish the race if it's your first event.

Whatever race goals you choose, it's a good idea to start planning how your mountain bike training will get you there in the weeks prior to the event. Having a better understanding of the five components of training, and how you can adjust them will give you a better foundation for planning your next mountain bike race.

1. Repetition / Frequency - The number of hills or intervals you complete in a given mountain bike ride is an example of repetition. How often you mountain bike in a given week is an example of frequency. Repetition and frequency represent the components you can adjust in your training sessions to ensure quality results.

With high intensive exercise followed by a recovery period, and in conjunction with adequate rest and recovery, intervals can improve your mental and muscular strength to allow you to perform at a higher level. For the mountain biker, hill climbing is a good example of interval training.

2. Terrain - Riding on different terrains allows the mountain biker to strengthen all the muscles necessary to perform well on race day. By shifting your body weight during your ride or standing on your pedals, you can shift more of the workload to your hamstring and gluteus maxima muscles and less from your quadriceps.

The rule - nothing new on race day equally applies here. Preparing for the mountain bike race by training on similar terrain will keep your muscles and mental stress level to a sustainable amount.

3. Volume - Most coaches measure volume by hours or time training - workout, week, month or year - verses distance. As riding 15 miles on hilly terrain can take you much longer than mountain biking on a relatively flat fire road, time monitoring your workouts is usually a better performance gauge of your training.

Adjusting your training volume up or down will increase or decrease your training load. Improvement to your aerobic system is best done with low intensity riding below your lactate threshold.

Intensity and volume are usually inversely related. Many times increasing your volume requires you to reduce the intensity of your training sessions. High intense intervals usually require a reduction in volume to prevent overtraining.

4. Intensity - is the measure, or level of intensity you put into a given workout. Doing multiple intervals up a steep hill for 45 minutes is very different then going for an easy trail ride for the same time period.

A heart rate monitor is the tool most athletes use to measure intensity. Over the years, heart rate monitors have improved since their inception over twenty years ago. Most HR monitors measure time, speed, distance, altitude climbed and include GPS.

If your bank account has some extra cash in it, the power meter has become the new tool for measuring intensity, or power output. Typically more popular with road cyclist and triathletes, the power meter measures power output, or intensity level with accurate results.

5. Pedal Cadence - training your muscles and mind to pedal at various cadences allows you to adapt more easily to various MTB race courses, and provides different rates of muscle stimuli, or contraction which will improve your muscular development.

Spending a day or two a week practicing pedal cadence training will help you develop your aerobic and anaerobic energy systems, your MTB skills, pedal stroke efficiency, and cadence. Consistent pedal cadence training, will provide you with additional human gears to improve your mountain bike race times.

Mountain bike training is based on exercise science, but the best program for you is an art form. Each person has a different physical and psychological make-up. Using exercise science as a benchmark and testing and adjusting these five mountain bike training components may be the best path to finding your winning program.

Keith Rejino is a personal trainer, mountain biker, and sports photographer for Dreamscape Images. His XC MTB Race website provides race coverage, XC MTB and nutrition tips. For more XC MTB tips, check it out.

Tags: bike, bike fitness, bike training, biking, exercise, fitness, mountain bike, mountain bike fitness, mountain bike training, Mountain Bikes, mtb fitness, mtb training, sports, sports training

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.