Can you be naturally unfit? I seem to be. I am out on my bike a lot and while I don’t usually put in big mileages I am frequently out for 2 -3 hour rides. However I seem to be particularly lacking in stamina for the amount of mtb that I do. Even a short uphill section will slow me down significantly and I very easily and consistently get tired and out of breath and it seems to me excessively so. Is this is just down to my natural physiology or might there be other reasons why this might be the case – high blood pressure, lung capacity, heart murmur etc – I have no idea. Or is it simply the case that 2-3 hours two or three times a week is not going to make much difference fitness wise? I am perhaps half a stone overweight but nothing excessive compared to a lot of the people I ride with. It would be good to know if anyone has any knowledge or experience or theories in this area? I do seem to have always been like this and its not something that has just recently or gradually come on.

A few years ago I was in a similar boat. Turned out that I have asthma.

I can get like that when I have a cold, allergies or lack of sleep,

Worth a chat with your gp if you are unhappy

Given that there are people who are naturally fit*, it seems reasonable that there are some people at the other end of the bell curve. Might be a reason for it, though, so it’s worth a visit to the GP. – Or maybe a fitness lab for an athletic assessment would me more useful – probably something you’d have to pay for, though.

It could be an attitude thing – I might be wide of the mark in your case, no offence meant at all – there are some people who don’t feel like they’re getting their money’s worth out of a bike ride until they’re tasting blood and nearly sick at the top of the climbs, and there are some that assume that feeling hot and out of breath is a sign that something bad is happening.

* eg my mate Mike from school, smoked, athsma, always did the barest minimum in sports and PE, standing around if was an option, lazy ping pong if it wasn’t, except for the bleep test: 15+ and cross country: top ten from 150. The git.

People have different natural talents, I am bad at endurance sports, I am pretty much always the slowest on group a ride. If you are riding 2-3 hours three times a week you should be seeing a decent benefit. It might be worth wearing a heart monitor to see how hard and consistently you are working and probably worth getting some specialist advice/full medical (eg heart monitor, lung capacity etc)

Getting enough sleep? You could be fatigued doing 9hrs a week??

How hard do you try?

If you take it really easy every time it gets hard you’re unlikely to increase fitness very quickly. If you try so hard that blood comes out your ears and you’re still not getting fit then there’s probably something wrong with you.

No, you are just naturally bone-idle, an excuse maker and wastrel, why are you on here wasting your time whining, get out there and hit the hills, push yourself.

Fatigue and pain are just punishment for the weak

OP – you haven’t said how old you are or how long/ how much exercise you did before riding a bike? How are you measuring it ie. do you ride alone a lot or is it mainly with particularly fit people (overweight does not necessarily mean unfit and slow!). Riding a bike is bloody hard work at times and maybe your own expectations are different from reality!

I would have thought that level of exercise should keep you reasonably fit but as said ^^ it may well be worth a checkup in case there is an underlying cause.

Nedrapier is correct in what he said. Some people are incapable of increasing their maximal aerobic capacity (VO2max), and a small minority actually show a decreased VO2max as a result of training.

Not saying you’re one of these people, you may just need to man up a bit, but there’s the possibility you fall into this minority.

…I am out on my bike a lot and while I don’t usually put in big mileages I am frequently out for 2 -3 hour rides…

go on shorter rides, but faster.

i commute, it’s approximately 2hours per day.

including my weekend rides, i’m doing at least 12 hours per week, you’d think i’d be super-fit, i’m not, i’m just knackered.

fitness wise, i’d be better off driving to work, and putting my energy into 3hours of ‘structured training’ per week.

(Monday = rest, tuesday = 30mins of intervals till puking, that kind of thing)

Yes. But as above, try doing some fast maximal intervals. Find a short hill and kill yourself up it six times.

It may be that you are naturally not that fast, but it may also be that you’re not mentally prepared to hurt yourself in training or on rides. There’s a mental and a physical aspect to fitness, and also a neurological apsect in between.

Different people have different rates of adaption to exercise, so that might be part of it, hard to tell on here.

Very important to make sure other things are all good and your body is firing on all cylinders. How’s your sleep, mood and do you get much sun?! Have you tried cutting out things like gluten, dairy, sugar, caffeine one at a time to see if there’s an effect?

people have different rates of adaption to exercise,

There was TV program recently, can’t remember what it was called, but they tested this presenter guy by putting him through some running training for a few weeks. At the end he was no fitter.

So they did some more tests and found that because of his genetic disposition, training would never make him any better. Apparently we all have a different bell curve response rate, he was at the extreme bell end of crap.

How hard do you try?

If you take it really easy every time it gets hard you’re unlikely to increase fitness very quickly. If you try so hard that blood comes out your ears and you’re still not getting fit then there’s probably something wrong with you.
This. If you go about the same speed every ride, eventually you’ll reach a level where you don’t get any fitter, and if you then go out with faster folk it’ll seem pretty hard. If you try as hard on your own as the group rides make you try, you’ll soon be keeping up more easily.

Weirdly, I’m feeling about 10 x stronger and fitter since I cut out gluten. It’s great! I also don’t need to “fuel” as much on rides.

One of the guys I ride with was saying the same as the OP, but for me it’s that he’s no stamina because he never rides for more than 2-3 hours. You need to get out for longer.

Michael Mosley was the guy, and for context I think the conclusions were more along the lines of some people can eat crap and get away with it (reduce cholesterol etc) by exercising, and some people like him have to stick to a strict diet to see improvement and exercise makes little difference.

One of the guys I ride with was saying the same as the OP, but for me it’s that he’s no stamina because he never rides for more than 2-3 hours. You need to get out for longer.

In the absence of any more info rom the OP I would tend to agree with molgrips rather than the above.

2-3 hours is a fairly long ride in my book (although the cycling gods on here may mock such a piffling ride time 🙄 ) and it may well be worth going shorter and harder ………. ahem!

Still worth checking with your GP first though so you can kill yourself without worrying about a heart attack 😉

he was at the extreme bell end

Sounds like me

Few useful ideas up there, top of my list would be GP/physical exam, you probably will have to pay but might get some answers and better to find that out before upping what your doing really.

After that some questions 2-3 hrs sounds good but how far do you go and what is the intensity?

If you get a clean bill of health then maybe try something different (- if you want to)
The best thing I did for my mountain bike fitness was to get a road bike, YMMV. Personal training by also be an option, there are more people doing this these days. I have a mate who goes out running with people to train them for specific goals.

I found STRAVA helped.

Not the leaderboards, the training log, I figured I was doing 6-9 hours a week, turns out it was a fair bit less, built it up to an actual 6 a week and now much fitter.

In the absence of any more info rom the OP I would tend to agree with molgrips rather than the above.

2-3 hours is a fairly long ride in my book (although the cycling gods on here may mock such a piffling ride time ) and it may well be worth going shorter and harder ………. ahem!

Ok, but if you are only riding 2-3 hours off-road it could be as little as 12-15 miles (and where we live about 1 1/2 hills). Consequently your body is barely into its ‘2nd wind’.

Also some of us are more suited to longer distances vs the more ‘explosive’ events, you’ve only got to watch athletics to see that.

You could do the same riding for years on end and get no fitter if you don’t up the ante now and then.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251

Link to the Michael Mosley thing about ‘non-responders’.

Ok, but if you are only riding 2-3 hours off-road it could be as little as 12-15 miles

12-15 miles can be pretty gruelling if you go hard enough and it’s steep enough.

Must say I agree with Molgrips on this – the body doesn’t care how far you go, just how long it takes and how hard it’s working. I’d wager it’s because you just ride at one intensity all the time, makes you very good at riding at that intensity!

Ok, but if you are only riding 2-3 hours off-road it could be as little as 12-15 miles (and where we live about 1 1/2 hills). Consequently your body is barely into its ‘2nd wind’.

Never mind ‘2nd wind’, after 3 hours I can guarantee I’ll have steam blowing out my arse and be looking for a pub 😉

I’d wager it’s because you just ride at one intensity all the time, makes you very good at riding at that intensity!

I’m convinced i ‘down-trained’ myself; started riding my commute to endurance heart rate in the hope that it would build endurance. I ended up struggling to keep up on group rides.

I am in no way a fitness god, but have experienced similar things so….

Are you looking at other factors? I find my performance suffers dramatically if I’m in any way dehydrated. For me this can result in shortness of breath where I’d normally be fine. The more dehydrated you are, the thicker your blood and the harder it is for your vascular system to pump it around the body and deliver oxygen. The belief is that the majority of the population spend their entire lives dehydrated. A few cups of tea at work before an evening ride is not enough, I drink maybe 3 litres of water on the day of a ride.

I also find that eating correctly on the day of a ride is crucial, if I scrimp on the calories my performance suffers, my stamina goes through the floor and I’m useless. You dont need to stuff yourself, but some high calorie, high carb food an hour or so before you ride may help a lot. Flapjack, malt loaf etc. I also find a coffee an hour before riding is beneficial. The temptation may be to cut down on the calories and use the biking to drop off any excess weight, but for me it doesn’t work.

As has been said intervals will help a lot. Hill intervals or sprints. Also maybe try mixing it up with some swimming/light running, that may help too.

Even a short uphill section will slow me down significantly

what are you measuring yourself against? This statement is just not an objective measure, you might think you’re slowing significantly, but maybe you’re just not, and it’s all in your head?

people have different rates of adaption to exercise

I worked around the corner from a running mate and we would meet up 4 lunchtimes a week to train. He was far better than me and had ran internationally on a couple of occasions. He also won the Southern XC champs and was 3rd in the inter counties so was a quality runner.
He suffered with a few injuries and on a couple of occasions had to take quite some time off.
I recall on one occasion he had about 8 weeks off running (didnt do any other exercise) and I carried on training.
On his first run back he sounded like an ageing asthmatic. After about a week he was back running 5 min milling in training and I was shelled out the back.
I have been fortunate enough to train with some top athletes and many much faster but his “adaption” to training was incredible.

I have been fortunate enough to train with some top athletes and many much faster but his “adaption” to training was incredible.

There appears to be huge factor in how people have ‘trained’ in their early years ( physiology presumably plays a large part) but I remember going out on the mtb in a group of reasonably fit guys (I was too at the time) and we were joined by someone who had raced as a young teenager but had since done no sport or training of any kind for over 10 years. He left us all for dead !

‘trained’ in their early years

Yes and to emphasise the point he classed himself as not particularly talented and I would agree he didn’t have the speed over shorter distance but excelled in XC and longer races. He also told me that when he was younger he wouldnt have made a dog train the way he trained 😯

Thanks very much for responses. I think there are some home truths in there around intensity I ride at and also my perception of how long and frequently I do actually ride for – in reality closer to 2 hours twice a week. It is all up and then back down again riding I do, and will be at the 10 mile mark. On the attitude thing, as an example, I recently rode a local friends race and did well on the down but died on the slight up hill middle section. People were chatting to each other casually (friends race and back of the pack) as they passed me as I was gasping like an idiot. Will look at the diet, hydration, heart monitor side of things. I do hydrate but probally closer to a litre rather than three. Interval training sounds too serious. The bell end of crap may well be my natural path.

Interval training needn’t be all HR zones and lycra. Just find a short loop that has short sharp climbs in it, that take maybe 30 seconds to a minute to do, and ride it as fast as you can. Focus on going like hell up each climb, until you can’t go any more, and then either spin the rest or get off and walk.

You SHOULD start to get further up the climbs each time, but if you don’t then there’s your answer 🙂

Intervals don’t have to be serious. Just pick a visible target point while out on a ride, and ride at maximum effort to it until you’re blowing out of your hoop and desperate to stop, calm the intensity right down until you recover then do it again. Even 4 or 5 of these efforts per ride will make a big difference, so long as you put the effort in.

ETA – beaten to it by Molgrips

Are you out for 2/3 hours, or riding for 2/3 hours? Big difference there.

Is that 10 miles in 2 hours riding, i.e. averaging 5 mph?

Finally, ever ridden an SS? If you’re used to holding a constant effort, it’ll force you to vary your effort, sometimes go easy, and sometimes flat out… worth a shot? More fun than training…