Foam rolling is important for mountain bikers- if you don’t know that yet you must be new to this site. Not a day goes by I don’t roll around on my foam roller and the improved mobility and decreased muscle soreness I get from using it are something every rider should experience.

Last Friday I had a client in from Moab and I went over the newest recommendations I have for using the foam roller. I videoed it and here it is for you to see as well. Even if you have seen my foam roller demos before there are a few new tips and tricks here I just picked up in the last few months.

-James Wilson-

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Mobility Training, Mountain Bike Injury Rehab

Sometimes you just don’t have a lot of time to get a good warm up in. Well, with this time crunched warm up drill that is no longer an excuse. Getting warmed up and mobile before strength training is very important and increasing mobility is a must for mountain bikers so this drill should come in handy.

-James Wilson-

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Exercise Demos and Routines, Mobility Training

Here is a new warm up drill I’ve been using in my facility. This is a great way to warm up for a workout or for a mountain bike ride. You can click on the link below the video payer to go to the source page at www.vimeo.com where you can download the IPod compatible video.

You can also click on the link below to download an overview of this warm up sequence.

Warm Up Drill #2

Warm Up Drill 2

-James Wilson-

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Mobility Training

I got some good questions regarding my last post on yoga and mountain biking and I thought it would be a good idea to answer them with another post. The first question was regarding my comment about the minuses of yoga and how it can develop hyper-mobility in bad areas like the low back and shoulders. The person asking the question was curious what this meant exactly.

This comes from the idea that not all joints are supposed to be mobile and flexible. One of the guys to popularize this concept is Mike Boyle and what he calls a “Joint by Joint Approach to Training”. While I’ll try to do this concept justice you can read one of his original articles on it by clicking here.

When you look at the human body and how it is designed to function you see that we have a series of stable and mobile joints stacked on top of each other.

In a nutshell, you want stable feet – mobile ankles – stable knees – mobile hips – stable lumbar spine – mobile thoracic spine- stable shoulders. Joints like the knees, lumbar spine (low back) and shoulders are easily injured if they move too much. Weak feet, caused by the modern athletic shoe, is one of the main causes of lower body orthopedic issues but that is a subject for another post.

You want your core to stabilize the lower back and resist movement, not help create movement. This is why some people can safely deadlift hundreds of pounds and others throw their back out picking up a 50 pound bag of dog food. The first group has a stable lower back and strong hips, the second group has a hyper-mobile lower back that bends too much and tries to help their weak hips which tweaks it out under relatively low loads.

Same with the shoulders. They are the most naturally mobile joint in the body and the trade off is that they need to be stabilized in order to keep them in a good position. Most shoulder problems are not from lack of strength or mobility but from a lack of stability, especially with the shoulder blades.

One of the problems that I see with yoga is that it was developed a long time ago and while there is a lot of wisdom in it, it does have some flaws in it’s methods. Not all joints are supposed to be mobile yet this fact is not accounted for in some poses, especially those that require a lot of twisting and mobility from the low back. The picture below makes my low back hurt just looking at it!

The nest question I got was how to choose a yoga studio and what types of poses to avoid. I would say that ultimately you have to educate yourself on proper movement and apply that knowledge to yoga. This is another problem that I see is that few yoga teachers understand the difference between coaching movement and coaching a yoga pose. For example, a simple pose like Down Dog is great IF you are not securing your shoulder with your neck and are instead letting your shoulder blades drop down and back. Just because you are in a position that looks like a pose does not mean that you are developing good movement habits.

Find a studio with a smaller client to instructor ratio and that has instructors who are meticulous about your form and posture. Finding a good yoga instructor is like finding a good trainer – they are worth their weight in gold so don’t be cheap and just go for the least expensive option.

Hope this helps clear up some of those questions. Read the article I linked to up top to start getting a better understanding of how the human body is designed to work and then apply that knowledge to all of your training, either in the gym or the yoga studio.

-James Wilson-

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Mobility Training

Before I get too far into this let me say that I am a general fan of yoga. I have done yoga in the past and I encourage my clients to use it as a tool for gaining extra mobility and body awareness. However, just like any other workout method it does have some disadvantages.

The main problem that I have is not with yoga per say but with yoga practitioners who do not understand basic training principles and terms. For example, the term “Power Yoga” is an oxymoron – power refers specifically to quick development of tension in a muscle and is best trained through fast movements like plyometrics or Olympic lifts. Seeing as how all forms of yoga are done in a relatively slow and controlled manner there is no way that it can develop “power” according to the true definition of the word.

Another term that gets used too loosely by yoga folk is “strength”. This term refers to an intense effort, or something that you can only sustain for a very short period of time. Doing a 3 rep max deadlift requires strength, doing 15 reps requires strength endurance. Holding a yoga pose that is impossible for you to maintain for more than 10-15 seconds requires strength, much longer than that and you are working on strength endurance.

Another thing to keep in mind is that mobility and strength is not the same thing. Just because you have increased your mobility does not necessarily mean that you have increased your strength. The yogi that can wrap themselves up into an awkward position is not “stronger” than the person that can do a double bodyweight deadlift.

Another problem is that yoga does a good job of teaching you how to control your own bodyweight but does not teach you how to control and handle an external object. It is called the SAID Principle – Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. If you want to get better at handling an external object, like your mountain bike, you have to practice handling an external object. Bodyweight training will only take you so far.

Why is this important? Because the trick to creating a good training program is to understand the pluses and minuses of a given method so you know how to better apply it. With all of this in mind let’s take a look at what yoga really has to offer us…

Pluses:

- It teaches good body awareness

- It develops mobility in key areas like the hips and upper back

- It develops core strength in those with poor core strength

- It is a low impact exercise for those that have to do something every day but rightfully don’t want to pound on their bodies too much

Minuses:

- It can develop hyper mobility in bad areas like the low back and shoulders

- It will stop offering a true strength challenge after the initial adaptation to it

- It does not teach us how to effectively apply our strength in real life movements or situation like having to bend down to pick up a heavy box or a child

So, as you can see this is not an “either – or” type argument. I use a lot of yoga inspired movements in my mobility programs and think that is has a lot to offer us, just not at the expense of real strength training.

The yoga fanatic that can achieve any position but is so weak that they can not get out of a wet paper bag is no better than the meathead who can squat 600 pounds but can not wipe his own butt. Another one of my favorite Chinese proverbs is “beware the man of one way”…extremes on either end of the spectrum are not the best so don’t get too caught up in one way of doing things. If all you do is yoga pick up a dumbbell some time and if all you do is lift try taking a yoga class – balance is what we should strive for.

-James Wilson-

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Mobility Training

Q: I have been with you for a while, and my riding strength has improved tremendously. I regularly clean hills I never even thought about trying a couple of years ago.

I rode with a group of riders on Saturday. One of the women from the group noticed I was doing some warm-up stretches on the bumper of my truck before the ride. She said I had it all wrong. Static stretching is for after the ride….Dynamic stretching is before the ride. She showed me stretches that involved a lot of quick motion. She has a lot of credibility because she is a very strong rider.

Is she “right”? What are some good immediate pre and post-ride stretches and exercises? Keep up the good work.

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A: Thanks so much for the feedback, I’m glad that I have been able to help you improve your riding. Having more fun is what it is all about and it sounds like I’ve been able to help you accomplish that.

Here is the story on the static stretching debate – as the great strength coach Ian King once said, using the words “always” and “never” shows a lack of critical thinking skills. Yes, there were some studies that showed that immediately after static stretching strength and power levels were decreased, but what does that really tell us? It certainly isn’t that we should never do any static stretching before working out or riding.

The reason for the decreased strength and power levels was because the muscles lengthened and relaxed which may be a good thing in muscles that are short and tight. For example, for most riders the hip flexors are chronically tight and short which inhibits the glutes. This results in decreased hip power which takes away from overall pedaling power. If you do some static stretching for the hip flexors and get them to relax and lengthen you will actually increase your hip mobility and make it easier to contract your glutes, which leads to better, more efficient positions on your bike and increased pedaling power.

Another thing to keep in mind is that those studies looked at the affects immediately afterwards so we have no real idea as to what the affects were later on. To say that doing some static stretching before a ride is going to negatively affect you 30 minutes, 60 minutes or more into it is taking a wild guess at best because the truth is we don’t know.

Now, I will say that dynamic mobility has a place in a pre-ride or workout routine which is why I recommend a dynamic warm up sequence. However, I also recommend doing some static stretching, especially for the quads, hip flexors and chest as these muscles tend to be short and tight and dynamic mobility movements may not achieve the desired results as well as static stretching will.

I recommend doing a stretch for the above mentioned areas as well as some marching knee huggers, squat to stands, calf stretches and Around the Horns before a ride if you want to get the best of both worlds. You can find all of these dynamic mobility moves in the blog post I just made.

Both methods are tools in our toolbox, the real trick is knowing what each tool does and then how to best apply it. To say that you never want to do static stretching before riding is not “right”. Ask your friend how they came to that conclusion based on the actual studies and I’ll bet that they will admit that they have never actually looked at the studies and are simply parroting something they read or heard back without any question or thought as to why that was the conclusion.

I don’t mean to sound cruel but people who do that are a pet peeve of mine. I call them “arm chair strength coaches”. They have never worked with anyone besides themselves and they simply repeat popular opinion on training without any critical thought or real experience in its application. These people populate most mountain biking forums which is why I don’t waste my time posting on them, but that is getting off subject.

And you have to be careful about giving strong riders too much credibility with training advice – a lot of times super talented riders succeed despite what they do, not because of it. While discussing nutrition with a top US XC rider, he once told me that he won a National XC race after eating Taco Bell. I certainly don’t think that Taco Bell was the best pre-ride meal. This is one of the best riders in the world and while he has a lot of training insight I would be hesitant to blindly take too much of it as training advice.

Ride Strong,

James Wilson

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Mobility Training, Rider Q & A