Last week I dove into the top reasons I think you should leave the skinny tire riding to the roadies. In the first part I covered how the nervous system views mountain biking and road biking and why road biking does not help you out much from a movement pattern standpoint. If you missed part one you can find here – http://tinyurl.com/afyxua

This week I want to cover part two…

2) It increases the risk of overuse injuries -

Every sport in the world has the potential for overuse injuries. Anytime you constantly repeat the same movements in the same way you start to develop strength and mobility imbalances. These imbalances eventually add up to the point of causing a breakdown in the body. Sensitive joints like knees, shoulders and the low back tend to be the target for most overuse injuries.

Cycling of any kind has a higher risk than most sports because of the extremely repetitive nature and shortened ranges of motion it requires. The more you find yourself pedaling a bike the more likely you are to end up with knee and/ or lower back issues.

This is just the nature of the beast and you ignore it at your own risk. Strength and mobility training are important parts of the picture since they are some of the only ways to restore and maintain balance around sensitive joints. Another way is to engage in cross training and avoid excessive training miles on a road bike.

Road cycling is not true cross training since you still find yourself locked into a very similar range of motion. It is not the exact same motion, which is why your nervous system does not directly benefit from it, but you still have shortened hip flexors, pecs and deltoids and take your knees through a very small and repetitive range of motion. This just adds to the wear and tear brought on by mountain biking.

In fact, since your position on a road bike tends to be deeper than on a mountain bike, any issues you have will actually be magnified and worsened. From my perspective the off season should be spent addressing imbalances and building tolerances for the amount of riding your will be doing during the season. While you need to ride a bike you do need to recognize that the more you ride the harder it will be to create positive change in your body in order to become more efficient and injury resistant during the off season.

For this reason I think that you should minimize your cardio training on a bike during the off season, not add to it through road biking. Sometimes the best thing to do as an athlete is to work the opposite patterns you use during your sport and things like sprinting, rowing, jump roping and dumbbell combo drills allow you to build cardio capacity while not adding to your long term injury potential.

Keep an eye out for my next post on this subject where I’ll cover my final reason to leave the skinny tires to the roadies…

-James Wilson-

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I’ve got family in town for my little girl’s 4th birthday (which was yesterday) so I don’t have a ton of time for a blog post but I wanted to mention something that I have been thinking about lately. We all have rides were we feel great and rides where we think we should have stayed home and played Guitar Hero.

The secret to minimizing the bad days and maximizing the good days is to pay attention to how you move on your bike. If you watch you will notice that on good days you tend to have better positioning on the bike – your hips are back, your chest is down towards the handlbars, your spine is straight and your elbows are flared out. I’ll guarantee on your bad days you tend to do the opposite – your hips are under you, your chest is upright, your spine is rounded and your elbows are tucked in.

If you do nothing else than make a conscious effort to get low and stay low then you will find that you can turn a bad day around pretty quickly. Try it out next time you are on the trail and just feel “off” and you’ll be pleased with the results.

-James Wilson-

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“Thanks for the check in. I successfully downloaded all the stuff, now I’ve got to organize it all! I think I’ve got your basic idea down.Was listening to some of your audio files last night. In looking through the manual I noticed there was no Military Press which you had said was one of the three basic exercises to do on some other postings? Change in thinking?”

Rick

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Great question…I still think the barbell shoulder press (aka military press) is a great exercise but over the last few years of working with mountain bikers I have observed that they tend to be very tight in the scapulo-thoracic joint. Since the can not effectively slide their shoulder blades down and back to clear room for the shoulder joint to press straight overhead you end up with compensations that can lead to shoulder problems.

 
The DB version is much easier on the shoulders since it allows for each shoulder to move on its own and you can not use as much weight. If I was training someone and saw that they had the upper back mobility and core strength needed to perform a solid barbell shoulder press I might add it in but when I am writing a program like the Ultimate MTB Workout Program, which is for someone I have never seen move, I don’t want to take any chances.

 
I personally do very little barbell shoulder pressing and do more with kettle bells. Strength is not the only issue, stability is a big one as well. For example, you should be able to hold a heavy weight over your head for an extended period of time. If you can press more than you can hold overhead for 10+ seconds then you have too much “strength” and not enough “stability”. DB and kettle bell shoulder presses work on this stability factor better than barbell presses do which is the main reason I do the bulk of my overhead pressing with them.

 
Let me know if you have any more questions…

 
Ride Strong,

 
James Wilson

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Here is a video I shot covering the concept of your MTB Performance Wheel and why it will revolutionize how you look at training for our unique sport…

James Wilson

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It never fails…every time a new person starts with us at my facility they inevitably hit a frustration point. Even “fit” people are shocked at how little they really know about their body and how it is supposed to move and work. Even though I warn people that there is a 2 week learning curve where you learn to show body awareness and control that they simply are not used to displaying it is still frustrating as they realize how many things they have to work on.

Last week I was working with a client who has been with us for a bit and he started to voice some frustration about an exercise and how something new we had made him aware of “made it harder”. This got me thinking about how most people approach their fitness program.

Most people want to feel good about and protect their ego. Getting out of their comfort zone scares the crap out of them and so they avoid exercises and programs that challenge them. This is another one of the reasons that things like machines and aerobics equipment are so popular – they do some of the work for you and make for an easier training experience.

What I realized was that mindset will always lead to lackluster results. Here are a couple of things I tell clients to help them keep things in perspective -

An ancient Chinese proverb says that “to be different from what you are, you must first know what you are”. The first step in changing something is finding out what it is and how you want it to change. This process can never start if you always avoid things that expose your weaknesses and give you a proper perspective on what and where you really are.

As frustrating as it may be at first, every weakness that you expose is an opportunity for change that you did not have the day before. From that point of view finding weaknesses should be embraced because that is the first real step in exacting change in your body.

You also want to remember that if you have the proper mindset you will want to seek out your weaknesses, not hide from them. Because the discovery of weaknesses is the first step in exacting change you never want to reach the point where you think that you have no weaknesses or else you have no more opportunities for change and growth.

What makes the masters in any craft better than anyone else is their constant desire to find their weaknesses and improve on them. Even the simplest of exercises hold lessons for everyone out there to learn, we just need to seek them instead of avoiding them. This mindset will not only help you achieve better results in the gym but also in your life, which is what training is really all about.

-James Wilson-

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“James,I just finished phase 2 of your program and I am very happy with the results. Thanks to your program, small modifications in my diet and the addition of a post-work drink I have manage to lose ~8lbs while seeing considerable gains in strength and overall performance in the gym. Unfortunuately, I live in Madison, WI and sub-arctic temps have kept me off the bike. It will be quite a while before I can tell you how much the program improved my riding.

Overall, the program has uncovered one big flaw, my weak hips. I definitely fit the description of the overpowered athlete. The program has taught me that my strong quads compensate for my ridicously weak hips. For example, completing a single pistol leg squat is next to impossible for me. As I enter phase 3 of the program is there anything I can do to correct the strength disparity? As I learn to perform some of the hip dominant and power excercises, I find that I recruit my quads and low back into the excercises. Despite my best efforts with excercises such as the deadlift, my low back often feels more worked than my glutes.

Any suggestions?”

Cory

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Corey,

I was listening to a podcast with Gray Cook on it and he said something very profound (which he does every time I hear him) – “You can’t lay fitness on top of disfunction and hope for good results”.

You’ve discovered a disfunction in your hips and taking care of that dysfunction is your top priority. What I mean by that is that if you need to just use bodyweight and a broomstick on an exercise like the deadlifts in order to get the feeling of using your hips down then that is what you should do.

When you do the deadlift it is extremly important to drive your heels into the ground. Don’t stand up, try to push the earth away from you. And be sure to squeeze your glutes tight at the top. There is a big difference between squeezing your glutes and pushing your hips back under you and just leaning back into the top of the deadlift. If you are not squeezing your glutes then you will use your lower back.

Perfect this technique with little to no weight and you’ll be far better off in the long run. Don’t worry that you need to lift a certain amount of weight to see results, that will come later.

Ride Strong,

James Wilson

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