What is Strength Training?

Strength training is any exercise that increases your muscle mass and endurance by using your own body weight or equipment as a form of resistance.

*Think push-ups, lunges, and dumbbells*

Unless you’re an MTB professional, you’d be forgiven for thinking that mountain biking is the training.

Riding is a workout on its own but there are numerous benefits to incorporating bodyweight exercises into your program.

It helps prevent injuries, improves your coordination and agility, builds bone density, decreases weight, and improves your power and endurance. All of which allow you to ride better.

Strength Training Exercises

Some popular strength training exercises include:

Lunges

Deadlift

Planks

Push-ups

…and the dreaded burpee

There are many forms of resistance training, so we’ve narrowed down a few well-demonstrated workouts specifically related to mountain biking:

Flow Mountain Bike

Training Peaks

Bicycling

Human Vortex Training

Trainer Road

REI Co-op

Knowing which bodyweight exercises to start adding to your program is all good and well but there’s one thing you’re probably not doing that has a huge effect on your performance.

Breathing

Breathwork makes the dream work

Incorporating resistance exercises into your training puts you on the right track to improving your overall performance, but you’re losing half the benefits if you’re not breathing correctly!

James Wilson explains the right (and wrong) way to breathe during strength training, and why the proper technique makes all the difference.

Some key takeaways from his article:

• Chest breathing (the wrong kind of breathing) changes your body’s hormonal environment, causing you to tense up. Tense is bad, fluid is good.
• Using your chest and upper muscles to breathe means they’re less available to support the rest of your body during a ride.
• Chest breathing uses minimal lung capacity, which is not ideal when you need all the oxygen you can get during a long ride.

Bodyweight exercises are an essential component of a well-rounded training program for mountain biking. Add it to your daily routine along with a focus on the correct breathing techniques and you’re all set for your next big event!