Why Mountain Bikers Should Be Strength Training - Part 2

Yes, you should be strength training if you’re into mountain biking. And let’s be clear, everyone should be strength training, whether you ride a bike casually once a week, your a competitive racer, or you don’t ride a bike at all you just live life, it’s very clear that regular strength training keeps us all healthy and allows us to participate in activities much deeper into life and helps with the slow creep of aging.

When it comes to mountain biking specifically there are 3 key areas we want to focus on as to why you should be strength training, whether you’re a complete newbie to mountain biking, a weekend warrior, or a long time racer/performance oriented rider they’re applicable to all riders at all levels. We’ll start with the first of three areas today…

Performance

This would be the first and most likely reason any rider starts hitting the gym or putting in work outside of being on the bike, and unfortunately this is usually most associated with people who race bikes. This is a big thing we want to educate riders on, regardless of your skill level, goals, style of riding, putting some time in the gym will get you performing better both on your bike and in

real life, you don’t need to be a competitive racer to do that or to get benefit from it. And for 99.9% of us, riding a bike isn’t our job, and we likely participate in other athletic/fitness based activities, so that time spent in the gym truly does have carryover outside of just riding the bike.

When we talk about performance there are so many aspects of what that can mean, but in the simplest form we think of it as gaining physical capacity that allows you to perform said activity, in this case mountain biking at a higher level. What does increased performance look like?

Increased performance can come in so many forms, and it’s important that we acknowledge that mountain biking is a very skill intensive sport, and your skill set on the bike can certainly make-up for lacking physical performance/capacity, but what so many don’t realize is that increased physical capacity can also help grow your skill set on the bike and allow you attain skills that you maybe didn’t realize required a certain amount of physical capacity to perform proficiently.

Performance increases can come in so many forms, it might mean you’re not the last one up the hill with your buddies, sucking wind in the back. It could mean you’ve gained power and strength output that now allows you to get up that steep, rocky, technical climb, it could mean gaining the power to hit the pedals a little harder and get the speed needed to hit a tricky feature on a trail. It could mean being able to hit a run top-to-bottom without your low back and glutes fatiguing and you having to stop to rest. It could mean just having an increased overall level of strength which allows you to handle the bike more and put it where you want to, especially if you’re someone who currently gets handled by the bike instead of handling it.

Whatever the form that increased performance manifests for you, the one thing we can be sure of, if we take two replicas of an individual, and one is 50% stronger, fitter, etc. and skill set is left the same between the two, the replica of the individual that is stronger, fitter, etc. will perform better in literally everything they are tested in. And it’s important to remember, especially for someone new to strength training, being stronger does not mean being bigger or heavier, most people, especially those with minimal training, can increase strength levels substantially putting on little to no bodyweight. For all of you out there, especially women, who are worried about getting “bulky” from lifting weights, please know you’re living in wonderland. Unless you’re a genetic outlier, most people have to work their asses of for years to pack any substantial muscle on, especially women.

We don’t know about you, but for us, in anything we do, we want to be good at it. We want to put the time in to learn and understand how to be proficient at what we’re putting our time, money, and energy into. That could be anything from our job, to mowing the lawn, to riding a bike. If the idea of being better at mountain biking is of interest to you, of developing more capacity, having the ability to continue to grow your bike skill set because you have the physical capacity to do so, it might be time to start dedicating a few hours a week in the gym to building your capacity both on and off the bike.