But this exercise also has a hidden benefit for us as mountain bikers. When done correctly, it also teaches you how to use your breathe to absorb an impact.

On the trail you will find yourself facing a hard impact and you can’t just “get tight” in anticipation of it. You need to remain loose until the moment of impact, absorb it and then be able to relax and move again. And this is what the Kettlebell Clean teaches you to do.

In this video I break down the Kettlebell Clean and give you the coaching cues I use to help the riders learn how to perform it and advanced tips tips to get the most benefit out of it.

-James Wilson-

While the core has muscles specifically for breathing, sometimes things get out of whack and we “forget” how to use them. We end up using other muscles like the chest to drive our breathing. This leads a couple of critical problems on the trail.

First, chest breathing is inefficient and doesn’t use our full lung capacity. You have to use the diaphragm to draw air all the way into the lungs and the deep abdominal muscles to exhale to achieve optimal gas exchange.

Second, when you don’t use the right muscles to breathe you end up using muscles that are better used to stabilize and power movement. When given the choice between creating movement and breathing those muscles will always choose breathing, leaving you without all of your core muscles to help you on the bike.

This means that when you are training you have to focus on good breathing habits so you don’t simply ingrain bad habits. In this new video I go over some basic strategies I use to help improve a rider’s breathing and to help integrate that improved breathing into strength and cardio workouts.

-James Wilson-

The ironic thing is that those types of events seem to be the best character builders as well. Like the old saying goes, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

All of this leads me to my recap of my first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament. As you can probably guess from the lead in, I had a few moments in the heat of battle where I was questioning my sanity for paying money to subject myself to it but I came out the other end better for it.

After waiting around until 3 pm to for my division to start – the old man white belts in case you’re wondering – I found myself standing by the mats waiting for my turn. I thought I was going to puke once or twice from the butterflies in my stomach and it took all my willpower to stay calm and focused.

As I was watching the regular white belt division finishing up before we got started I noticed something – there was a dude who I knew was competing in my division who was kicking all the 20 something’s asses. He ended up winning that division and I just happened to draw him as my first match.

He was a real nice guy who told me he had been doing BJJ for about 6 months but you could tell from his cauliflower ears and take down skills that he wasn’t a stranger to the mats. Turns out he had wrestled for a long time and recently picked up BJJ after a 16 year hiatus.

Well, he may not have been a wrestler for 16 years but he still had some moves. I won’t lie and say that first match was close. He ended up beating me on points 10 – 0 and I spent the whole match on my back getting crushed under him.

Trying to minimize the smashing…

After I realized that I wasn’t going to win this match my goal was simply to put up a good fight and not get submitted. I spent the last minute staring up at the ceiling wondering why I would ever subject myself to this again.

After the match was over I wasn’t super stoked to say the least. I knew that the odds were against me winning but I was hoping for more than just getting smashed for a single 5 minute round to show for all my hard work in the gym, time I took to drive to Denver and money I spent on the trip.

Gathering up my stuff I got a tap on the shoulder. Turns out that since there were only 5 guys in my division I was going to get to fight in the Bronze medal match.

The next guy I went up against turned out to be a “real” white belt like me with no former grappling experience. I won’t go into a lot of details about the match since I have a video of it posted below but I will tell you this – I ended up winning by choking him out sitting on his chest in Mount and it was the most exhausting thing I have done in a looooong time.

It was much harder being the aggressor than just defending myself like I did in the first match. Add in the pressure of not giving up the win the closer we got to the end of the match and I felt like I had just run a marathon and hit a new PR on my deadlift when I was done – my lungs and muscles were toast.

One tired winner…

Which leads me back to my original point. 5 minutes after that last match, despite being the winner, I wasn’t sure I’d ever do it again. However, the further away I get from it the more fun it seemed and now I’m really looking forward to the next one…weird but true.

This experience taught me a lot about myself and the power of pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. You can’t really grow when you are in your comfort zone but unfortunately most people spend their lives trying to stay there as much as possible.

For us as mountain bikers this doesn’t mean entering a race or event you feel you’ll do well in. Part of the discomfort should come from facing the unknown.

This can come in the form of entering a race if you’ve never done it, entering a different type of race if all you do is compete in one genre of riding or, better yet, doing something completely unrelated to the bike.

In fact, I really think that if all you do is ride bikes that you’ll get far more out of an experience that has nothing to do with bikes. I know it sounds like crazy talk but it is true.

The old samurai knew this well and would spend time studying art, poetry and other pursuits. These guys lived and died by the sword and even they recognized the need and value in expanding your horizons. Even my favorite old school samurai Miyamoto Musashi talked about the importance of studying other “ways” in order to better understand his own.

So there is my challenge to you…do something this week that scares you. It may only be signing up for something like a race, a cooking class or something else that you’ve wanted to do but have let the call of your comfort zone stop you from pursuing.

Just know that it will be uncomfortable and probably really suck in the heat of doing it, which is exactly what you want. You’ll come out the other end a better person, and a better rider, for it.

-James Wilson-

In case you don’t know, Pavel is the guy behind the modern day kettlebell movement and is one of the brightest guys in strength training. Andy is the only guy in the world to deadlift over 1000 pounds (1008 to be exact) and has also squatted over 1200 pounds.

Put them together and you have two guys who have forgotten more about getting stronger than most of us will ever know. Have them write a book and you have, well, Deadlift Dynamite.

Despite the deadlift being front and center, the book actually goes into all three Powerlifts – the squat, bench and deadlift – in great detail. In it Pavel and Andy give you tools to help you learn the movements and tips to get more strength out of them as well.

For example, they provide some great stretches, mobiltiy drills and corrective exercises to help groove the movement patterns used by each exercise. They also teach you how to generate maximum tension in the right areas to create a stronger, more stable platform to move from, which greatly improves you strength and safety.

They also go over principles to helps you best integrate the squat, deadlift and bench press into your program. Among them are…

- Keeping your reps per set to less than 5

- Never training to failure unless testing your limits in competition

- Cycling your loads so you that you start “light” and build up over the course of 6-12 weeks to a new personal best.

Andy also goes into his personal workout program, which is a lot simpler than you probably think. In fact, that was one of the things they emphasized a lot in the book – no fancy approach can replace hard work, patience and attention to detail. Getting stronger is a marathon, not a sprint, and doggedly focusing on the basics for a long period of time is still the key to getting there.

All in all I really liked Deadlift Dynamite. While I don’t use a lot of bench pressing in my programs and the powerlifting focused workouts aren’t exactly what I’d recommend for a mountain biker, getting stronger in the the deadlift and squat are keys to a riders success.

If you struggle with the deadlift or squat then the progressions covered in the book will really help speed up your learning curve. Even if you have them down pretty good you’ll still get something from the advanced tips to help you squeeze a little more tension and strength out of them. I’ve got those two lifts down pretty good and I got some great tips out of it.

I’ve often said that a rider needs to be able to do a 1.5 – 2 X bodyweight deadlift and I know that a lot of you reading this can’t do that just yet. When you do everything else you do on the trail will seem much easier and you’ll have much more core and leg strength to put into your riding. If you haven’t reached that goal yet then check out Deadlift Dynamite, it is sure to give you a big boost on your way there.

-James Wilson-

In my experience, the Goblet Squat is the best way to learn how to squat. It is also a kick butt exercise as well and a go-to lower body exercise in all of my routines. In this video I go over the Goblet squat and share some important details can help you avoid some common mistakes and get even more out of this great exercise.

-James Wilson-

You can’t come into a ride in a chronically dehydrated state and expect to perform consistently.

It sucks even more if you’re out in the middle of nowhere with no idea exactly how far away you are from civilization and only half a bottle of water left. Which is exactly what happened to me on my first mountain bike ride.

Now, at the time I didn’t really think of it as mountain biking. I was just riding my old Nishiki Bravo fully rigid bike around some old jeep roads when visiting my grandparents in Oklahoma. While I had only used the bike to commute around town, one day I was bored and decided go pedal around the woods.

Long story short, I was grossly under-prepared for the summer heat and how much I was going to sweat. I found myself severely dehydrated and suffering from the worst quad cramps ever – I literally couldn’t get them to bend and they hurt like hell.

Luckily I had half my bottle of water left and drinking it got my quads to relax. I was able to get moving again. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if I cramped like that again with no more water left but luckily I found a short cut back to my grandparents house and didn’t have to find out.

When I got into mountain biking for real a few years later I remembered that episode and swore I’d never let it happen again. This is why I take my hydration pretty seriously.

More than just cramps…

Even if you don’t suffer from cramping, if you allow yourself to get dehydrated you’ll hurt your performance. For example, a loss of only 2% bodyweight causes a reduction in performance by 10% or more. A fluid loss exceeding 3-5% bodyweight reduces performance by up to 30% while also impairing reaction time, judgment, concentration and decision making – not good things to start losing in the middle of a hard ride.

A quick search on Google will reveal more nasty results from even minor dehydration. If you want to learn even more about the effects of dehydration check out this more in depth article. Either way, hopefully you’re starting to see why staying hydrated is so important.

How much water should you drink?

So now the obvious question becomes how much water should you drink? You’ll get a lot of different answers to this one, ranging from the standard 8 glasses of water a day to a gallon or more. Believe it or not there isn’t a really solid answer to that question.

I personally shoot for 2 liters of water a day, which is a little more than 8 glasses but not as much as a gallon. On the days I sweat a lot from riding or training BJJ I will drink more water but don’t really track how much more, I just try to avoid getting thirsty. I don’t count what water I drink during riding/ training towards my 2 liter goal, it is just used to replace what I sweated out.

While I’ve always been pretty good about my hydration I’ve recently started doing 2 things to help me be more consistent with it and improve my results from it.

Two simple hydration tips…

First, I bought myself a 2 liter container that I fill up each morning and put in the fridge. I know that by the end of the day I have to have at least drank that container. It gives me a brainless way to keep track of it instead of trying to count how many times I’ve refilled my water bottle.

Second, I’ve started adding 1 pinch of unrefined sea salt per liter of water. Adding a pinch of unrefined sea salt is supposed to help your body better absorb and utilize the water you drink. This means you pee less of it out so you can get more out of the water you do drink.

Obviously the sea salt advice doesn’t apply to riders who still look at fast food as a food group. They need to work on cutting out sodium from their diets and adding more may not be the best idea. Adding a pinch of unrefined sea salt to your water while you’re pounding down a Big Mac and fries is missing the point.

But for those of us that have our diet under control then this is something I’d suggest checking out. You can get unrefined sea salt at any natural foods store and it is pretty cheap. Just make sure you get unrefined sea salt – which contains 50-70+ minerals and trace minerals – and not plain table salt, which is just plain sodium chloride.

Hydration matters more in the heat.

If you’re one of the many riders dealing with cramping as the weather heats up then make sure you are drinking at least 2 liters of water per day (more on the days you ride) and add a pinch of unrefined sea salt to each liter of water you drink. You can’t come into a ride in a chronically dehydrated state and expect to perform consistently.

Also, make sure you drink plenty of water on the trail and don’t lose too much sweat before you start drinking to replace it. Have a re-hydration strategy when you ride and don’t jut wait until you get thirsty. Once the effects of dehydration have set in you’ll have to work even harder to maintain the same pace, making early hydration critical to late ride performance.

Making sure you have your basic hydration needs down is the first step to being a consistent performer on the trail. Plus, it is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your performance. Try these two simple tips and if you have any that you’ve found helpful please post a comment sharing them, I’d love to hear it.

-James Wilson-

Anyways, my point is that as much as I love that old song I have to disagree and say that technique is one of the most important things to sweat. Unfortunately for us, though, in the mountain biking world technique is rarely as prized as it should be.

Technique is basically your ability to perform a movement or skill with maximum efficiency and energy transfer. No matter what you’re talking about on your bike – pedaling, cornering, attack position on descents – the better your technique the less energy you’ll waste and the more powerful you can be.

One of the really interesting things I’ve found while learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is the contrasting attitude toward technique. In the BJJ world technique is king and simply using your strength and fitness to power through something is discouraged and frowned upon. I’m always being encouraged to relax and use my technique to set up my ability to use my strength and fitness, not the other way around.

Now, compare this with the rider who has poor pedaling technique (as evidenced by their inability to keep their feet on the pedals when trying flats), bad body position when standing up in the attack position and horrible cornering skills. Are they encouraged to fix their technique first?

No, they are told that the answer to riding faster is to improve their cardio and power levels so they can compensate more for their bad technique. Well, maybe not in so many words but that is the underlying message. Who cares if you have crappy cornering technique and you blow all of your speed when you can simply pedal harder on the other end to make up for it?

Personally, I completely agree with the BJJ approach. You want to train hard to be strong and fit, you just don’t want to use that strength and fitness to make up for bad technique. Sweat the technique and use it to allow more efficient use of your strength and fitness. Plus, better technique simply looks cooler.

In training this often means focusing more on fewer things. In my opinion, in the gym there are 3 things you should sweat the technique on until you have them perfected…

• Deadlift
• Goblet Squat
• Turkish Get Up

…and on the trail here are the 5 skills you need to have your technique dialed in on.

• Body Position
• Seated Pedaling
• Standing Pedaling
• Cornering
• Manualing

BTW, you can get access to a collection of skills training videos going over those 5 skills at www.mtbskillsandfitness.com.

While you certainly want to work on improving your strength and cardio just also be aware that technique is very important. It is something that you want to spend focused time and energy on. Without it you’ll just end up working way harder than you need to and not looking nearly as cool doing it.

-James Wilson-

A study by the old Soviet Union’s sports scientists showed something very interesting about the ability to relax. When they looked at the differences between their Olympic level sprinters and those just below them it wasn’t the ability to contract harder that separated them – it was their ability to relax more between contractions.

This means that it wasn’t the ability to produce tension that these other runners needed to work on, it was the ability to cycle that tension with relaxation of those same muscles.

Think about it this way – two muscles have the same contraction/ tension production potential of 1 – 100. The difference is that once the first muscle contacts all the way up to 100 it can drop all the way back down to 20 before contracting again while the other muscle can only drop back down to 30.

Each muscle will be contracting just as hard at the end so they’ll appear the same on a power meter or strength test, but the first muscle will be doing it more efficiently since it is able to put more into each contraction. It may not be a huge difference at first but eventually that inability to relax and let the tension levels drop to an even lower level will catch up to the second muscle, fatiguing it faster than the first muscle.

To me this says that the ability to relax is just as important as your ability to contract and produce tension. Strength and cardio are really a double sided coin and you have to master both sides to be “fit” without working against yourself in the process.

One of the best places to start practicing relaxation techniques is when you are trying to stretch and mobilize a tight muscle or joint. One of the most common mistakes riders make when working to improve their mobility is trying to fight tension with more tension.

I tell every client I work with that when you are doing your mobility work you can’t force the issue.

You have to learn to use your breathing to help you relax into a stretch or mobility drill. Once you learn how to do this with your mobility work you will also find it easier to apply to your cardio and strength training.

In this video I go over this concept and show you how to apply it to your stretching and mobility training. I know that now everyone will appreciate that they don’t have to turn everything – including their stretching – into a life and death struggle but for those that do this video will change how you look at improving both your mobility and ultimately your performance as well.

BTW, the response to my new Mountain Bike Mobility Follow-Along Videos has been awesome. Almost 200 riders have gotten their copy already and it isn’t too late for you to still get in on the No-Brainer Release Special -

• Over 50% off the regular price – for only $17 you get 6 follow-along mobility routines, including 3 that target the Shoulders-Neck, Low Back-Hips and Ankle plus 3 pre-workout/ ride routines.

• Over twenty 15 Minute Trail Rider Tune Up bonus workouts, including bodyweight, kettlebell and TRX routines.

• Over two dozen bonus mobility videos from my archives, including some unreleased videos you can’t find anywhere else.

You can check out this blog post to learn more about the videos or you can click the link below to get instant access to them, plus all the bonus workouts and videos, for only $17.

Click Here to Get Instant Access to the Mountain Bike Mobility Follow-Along Videos Plus All the FREE Bonus Workouts and Videos.

-James Wilson-

However, if you didn’t get a chance to watch all 3 videos I can sum it up for you like this…

Mobility is like the alignment in your car. You can have a powerful engine (muscles) and a big gas tank (cardio) but if you have bad alignment you’ll waste a lot of power and gas plus you’ll wear out your tires faster. In other words, bad mobility means that you produce less power, you waste more energy doing it and you wear out your joints faster.

Simply put, your ability to move freely underpins everything you do on the bike.

I also explained how mobility has 3 parts (tension, length and motor control) and that doing 10-15 minutes of mobility training 5-7 days a week was better than doing 60-90 minutes of yoga once a week. This means that a good mobility strategy will have you doing something to address all 3 areas of mobility on an (almost) daily basis.

During the riding season you have to especially be on guard against losing mobility as you spend more time on the bike, adding a lot of tension to the same muscles over and over again. However, a lot of riders simply don’t know what to do and end up doing a few token stretches (which I explained can actually make the situation worse) or they end up doing nothing. Either way they end up in a spiral of decreasing mobility and performance and increasing joint pain.

Since this is the time of year that you need to be ramping up your mobility training to offset the extra riding you’re doing I have created the new Mountain Bike Mobility Videos to help you with that problem. This new program includes 6 follow-along mobility routines and will give you everything you need to address both specific problem areas and to address the need for a good pre-workout/ ride warm up routine.

First are 3 all-new Specialized Mobility Routines that target the main problem areas for mountain bikers…

• Shoulders/ Neck
• Low Back/ Hips/ Knees
• Ankles/ Knees

Each of these 10-15 minute routines will take you through a series of foam rolling, dynamic stretching and mobility drills that will help restore mobility and decrease pain in these key areas. Focusing on your specific problem areas will help you get far more out of your daily mobility practice than just using a more general routine can.

Next are 3 progressive warm up routines from my Time Crunched Trail Rider Program that prepares the body to train/ ride while also decreasing the risk of injury. These 15 minute routines get your body primed and ready to performance and can set you up for a powerful, pain free performance.

That’s 6 total follow-along mobility routines – none of which take more than 15 minutes to complete – that will give you the tools you need to greatly improve your mobility and the quality of your rides/ training sessions while also decreasing nagging aches and pains. Even if you’re not following one of my workout routines you can use these mobility routines to enhance the results of whatever routine you are following.

After finalizing the routines and shooting the videos over the last few weeks I’m finally ready to release this new program and I really want to get these new videos into the hands of as many riders as possible. I think that these Mountain Bike Mobility Videos will literally change the lives of a lot of riders as it helps them discover that they can not only move better but also move pain free.

So, to do that I’m going to have a No-Brainer Launch Special where I make this such a great deal you don’t even have to think about.

For starters, while the final price on the 6 Mountain Bike Mobility routines will be $37 I’m going to give it to you for only $17, which is over 50% off the regular price! While this is a great deal in itself I’m going to throw in a bunch of bonuses as well.

First up, you’ll get a FREE copy of my 15 Minute Trail Rider Tune Up (15 M-TRTU) Workouts. These 15 minute routines are the perfect compliment to the mobility routines, giving you a short workout to that will help cement your mobility gains while also helping improve your strength and fitness. With over 20 of these innovative routines to choose from – including bodyweight, TRX and kettlebell routines – you’re sure to find a couple that you really love.

Next, you’ll also get FREE access to a special video album that contains every mobility video I’ve ever shot. This includes demos of dozens of warm up routines, stretches, foam roller demos and other mobility tools. I’ve never had all of these available in one place before (some have never been released before) and it will contain a lot of videos that you can’t find anywhere else.

So, all together you’ll get…

• The new Mountain Bike Mobility Videos which includes 6 follow-along video routines.
• The 15 M-TRTU workouts which has over 20 workouts, each with its own video demo.
• The special Bonus MTB Mobility Video Album which has dozens and dozens of additional routines and demos not found anywhere else.

…all for only $17! This is a crazy good deal, which is why it won’t last long. At the end of this week this deal will be gone for good so don’t wait, click on the link below to grab your copy today!

Click Here to Order the New Mountain Bike Mobility Videos for only $17 plus all of the FREE bonuses before this special deal ends this weekend.

Hopefully I’ve done my job and made this such a great deal that it really is a No-Brainer and some of you who wouldn’t usually be interested in a mobility product will check it out. Once you experience the power of improved mobility you’ll see that it truly is the key to better performance and less pain.

-James Wilson-

While you need to limit what you do in those areas, the third area of your training program actually needs to see a large increase. Mobility training is at the heart of how you perform as an athlete and is the first thing to go when you start to spend a lot of time on the trail.

Like I mentioned in the last video, the more efficiently you move the stronger you can be so taking the time to retain your ability to move freely off the bike is your #1 training priority during the riding season. Plus, mobility levels directly affect things like low back pain, neck stiffness and knee issues which means you can ride with less pain as well.

This morning I posted a new video explaining a bit more about the importance of mobility, how mountain biking can negatively affect your mobility levels and how you can combat that with a smart 3 part training strategy.

Like I reveal in the video, improving your mobility requires much more than doing some stretches or taking a yoga class. There are 3 things you must do in order to mobilize your joints in a way that will help you train and ride more efficiently.

BTW, more efficient movement creates more power, requires less energy and results in less pain…if you’re interested in those sorts of things.

The all-important role of mobility training during the riding season is also why I created my new Mountain Bike Mobility collection, which features 3 new follow-along routines. Each routine targets one of the 3 main problem areas for mountain bikers so if you have a stiff neck, sore low back or achy knees then these routines may be just the thing you need to ride pain free.

I’m almost done getting the videos edited and I’ll be ready to release them next week. As a special bonus for the release of these new routines I’ll also be including my entire mobility routine anthology, which is basically every warm up, foam rolling and stretching video I’ve ever shot. Not sure what the exact number is but there are a lot of them, including several pre-workout follow-along routines.

I’ll post more details on Monday about how you can get your copy of the new Mountain Bike Mobility routines plus my entire mobility routine collection, in the meantime have fun on the trails this weekend and keep it rubber side down!

-James Wilson-