In order to excel at mountain biking you need three things – physicality, technique and tactics. You need all three in the right amount and having a weakness in any of them can drag down your whole riding experience.

Physicality is your ability to execute the movements you need on the bike and the endurance to do it repeatedly. A good example of this is the hip hinge movement, which is your ability to lean over by using the hips instead of the lower back. This is the movement pattern behind exercises like the deadlift in the gym and movements like getting into the low “attack position”, jumping and bunny hopping on the bike.

One of my insights into mountain bike training happened many years ago when I was at a skills camp and the instructor was working with a rider on getting into the low attack position on their bike. This rider was really struggling to do it right and instead of shifting the hips back and dropping their chest towards the handlebars they were rounding their low back and spine, which got their face lower but didn’t result in a strong, balanced position on the bike.

While watching this unfold I had an epiphany – this rider probably couldn’t touch their toes when they were off their bike. Being able to touch your toes is a basic prerequisite to being able to hip hinge properly and this told me that they simply couldn’t do what they were being told to do. No amount of coaching would fix the basic problem of their lack of physicality needed to execute the skill in the first place.

Over the years I have identified the basic movement patterns that drive each of the major skills we use on the bike and a common theme I see now is that riders who struggle with skills simply lack the ability to move the right way off the bike. Another example that I talk a lot about is cornering. 

The vast majority of riders I’ve worked with struggle with the Windmill exercise, which is the ability to perform a twisting hip hinge while staying balanced over their feet. In my experience once they fix this movement issue, cornering starts to just naturally happen without a ton of instruction.

I could go on but the point is that if you are struggling to execute a skill on your bike then odds are really high that you lack the physicality needed. You need to work on mobility, strength and conditioning so you can move properly, move with purpose and sustain that movement over the course of a ride.

Now, once you have these things in place then skills training can be very helpful. The irony is that you usually don’t need much formal instruction because your body starts to figure things out on its own. In fact, I’ve come up with a 15 minute rule, which is that if I’m working with a rider and they struggle to execute a skill properly after 15 minutes of instruction then they have a physicality issue and I stop the technique instruction to dig into the movements they are lacking.

When you have the physicality and technical skills part covered then you need to focus on tactics, which is how to apply your skills to specific situations. This is where reading the best line through a trail section comes in or how to approach and exit a corner for maximum speed and efficiency. 

Tactics also apply to trails, which is why you find local riders who can rip their local trails but struggle when they ride something new. They know exactly how to apply the best tactics to their local trails but those tactics don’t have a strong foundation of physicality and technical skills. They struggle to apply new tactics to new trails because they need a lot of time to figure out how to apply their limited physicality and technical skills to a new set of problems.

Tactics are important and can help keep you safe so I’m not saying that you don’t need to worry about that part of riding at all until you have the physicality and technical skills covered. But you can waste time if you aren’t making sure you have the physicality and technical skills to support the tactics.

Your physicality forms the foundation of your riding, your technical skills are built on that foundation and your tactics are built on top of both of them. Together they create the potential for you to improve your riding, which is why a weakness in any of them can bring your progress to a halt.

For the older rider the physicality part of the equation becomes even more important to focus on. Your physicality will naturally degrade as you age, which means that in order to maintain your potential you have to work on slowing that process down.

When we are younger our physicality is at its natural peak, which is why you can get away with poor training habits and still see progress on the bike. But once you hit 40 those advantages go away, which is another reason that strength training isn’t optional for the older rider.

What’s more, you need to make sure that the strength and conditioning plan you have is designed for the older rider. Trying to use training plans that are meant for someone in their 20’s or 30’s can lead to frustration and a whole new group of problems as your body struggles to keep pace with workouts that it isn’t capable of recovering from.

You also need to make sure that your workouts are creating new injuries or irritating old injuries. This is why I’m such a big fan of isometrics for the older rider since they are the safest way to build strength and they have an interesting carryover to mobility and cardio.

If you want to improve on the bike then you need to make sure that you have a good plan. Understanding how physicality, technical skills and tactics relate to each other will help you better understand what you need to work on to improve.

For the older rider the physicality part is something that you always need to work on, if for no other reason than to maintain what you have. Without strength and conditioning work your overall potential will start to degrade, which means less fun and more frustration on the trail.

If you want a crash course of strength and conditioning basics for the 40+ year old rider check out this podcast/ post I made covering everything you need to know in order to make smart training decisions. Armed with this knowledge you can be more confident in your future on the bike and your ability to ride for a lifetime.

And as always, if you have any questions about this post or anything else related to riding let me know, I’m always happy to help. 

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson