WHY WE TRAIN
Mountain Bike Rider|Summer 2020
You’ll ride faster, for longer, and have more fun, we guarantee it... and it starts with as little as two hours a week
WHY WE TRAIN

Riding your bike is great for fitness, but the chances are you got into the sport because it was great fun. Thankfully getting fitter and stronger off the bike will allow you to have more fun on it. Yes, off-bike training lacks the appeal of riding, but the net gain will be worth it because it’s likely to be your strength and those shorter, more intense efforts that are holding you back as a rider. Your bike-handling skills, performance on steep stuff, agility, power and ability to recover quickly will all radically improve with training.

So how much work does it take? Surprisingly little: just two hours a week, which is as much off-bike training as some pro riders do. By training sensibly you can fill in strength and intensity deficits in a short amount of time. We’re not saying it’s going to be easy, but it won’t take hours and hours of monotonous gym time like you might think.

TRAINING OPTIONS

You don’t want to be wasting your time so it’s all about using a purposeful, efficient approach that gives you a high bang for your buck. The following four approaches can all help you boost your riding while keeping off-bike training to a minimum.

1 FIND A ONE-ON-ONE COACH WITH EXPERIENCE OF MOUNTAIN BIKING

This story is from the Summer 2020 edition of Mountain Bike Rider.

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This story is from the Summer 2020 edition of Mountain Bike Rider.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.

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