What forum for training advice / information ?

What forums do you use for Mtb training advice and information?

Mtb training advice
I use http://www.singletrackworld.com to educate myself about so many aspects of the world according to mountainbikers. Try it.

Anything American….

There’s a bike, gear, chat, and wanted but no training ? Just ask in bike then ?

What do you want to know Rooney?

Just looking for info on what people do for Mtb training. I’m from a tri back ground and all training on a road bike. Want to get more information on different ways people train on a Mtb. Looking at getting more into Mtb ….
Skill is a big part I think so how much time just practicing that?

Hi rooney – I am an exercise physiologist by day I have been lucky enough to work with a range of athletes from road, triathlon and mtb backgrounds and from looking at their power meter files there are some marked differences (and some similarities) between them – in the same rider even.

A successful bike leg of a triathlon is a nice steady effort ride at close to your (sustainable) threshold – you want a hard but manageable effort that gets you to the run in the shortest time possible but with an eye on conserving energy during the bike to use on the run. So you try and maximise your power output through using a steady torque/cadence effort through the ride. I am sure you are well aware of this of course.

It was also very obvious that riding off road is very different, the trail regularly undulates, has corners, varied surfaces and obstacles to navigate. Holding a very steady effort in such situations is somewhat challenging, nay impossible, and so a mtb rider generally requires an ability to produce a range of ‘efforts’ across a much wider range of torque and cadences. A high sustainable threshold is important as a by-product of that type of ‘fitness’ is a good/quick recovery between bursts of effort. But you will also need to be able to deal with whatever the trial throws at you – and to do that you need to have a well rounded forte of ‘interval’ type efforts – from a few seconds, right up to a good number of minutes for extended (hard) climbing.

Cheers, I’m moving from long distance tri training and looking at short Mtb tri or duathlons. So working on shorter intervals will be a start. I live very close to glentress, would finding a nice shortish loop of 30-40 mins be good and doing 3 or 4 laps? This would practice intervals and skills ?

(Moving from using a powermeter on tri bike to going on PE is good and I’m sure my power is higher on Mtb!, heart rate is and this peaks going downhill ;). )

Go to xcracer.com. A bunch of fat middle aged men who raced in the fun category at Sleepless once ten years ago and had a bad experience with a sports bar at 2am are not going to be useful for you. Labmonkey I’m sure knows what he’s talking about, but most people on here don’t.

Ah ok, so you are familiar with power training – well you are likely to have a higher normalised power on the mtb than on the road bike due to the stochastic nature of riding off road. A hard mtb ride will give you an intensity factor of >0.95, of course this will be lower if you are ‘just chilling’. So take that into account when you switch over, if you do 4 hour rides on the road bike, then consider 2-3 hours on the mtb as the training stress score per hour will likely be higher, and you will want to match this between the road and mtb as you make the switch – this *should* help you avoid overtraining.

Riding off road once or maybe twice a week will help you at first as you will learn how to simply ride in the dirt/mud – much of riding quickly on a mtb is related to technique. Remember though that you will also use supporting muscles to ‘wrestle’ the bike about and so you may feel that parts of your body other than your legs start to hurt as a result of more mtb work. As ever, start light and build up over time.

In terms of intervals, you could do soem on the road bike and/or turbo, and a starting point would be 5 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 8 minutes and 20 minutes. These will cover the major energy systems and if you vary the cadence a little between/within sessions – so for example, change your gear by one cog for each interval in a set – you should develop your torque/cadence power range nicely.

Perceived effort would be my preferred way of gauging your effort – one you calibrate your ‘off-road system’ as the heart rate response is a bit slow to get meaningful feedback on anything but the occasional sustained steady effort.

Hope that all makes sense.

Yep mate perfect sense, cheers. I use Sporttracks to record trimp score as no power. Works on heart rate stress score.
It’s the other body aches iv noticed more especially legs when descending !
Usefull info for turbo mate cheers as I can change training sessions on that and see power out in these.

Upper body workouts beneficial too? More muscle up top ?

…. I know time in saddle and quality over quantity is better but I still find it hard to get my head round a 2 hour ride being 18 mile instead of 36. 🙂

TRIMP can work OK – or if you can work an excel page – work out your threshold HR and then calculate a HR-TSS value for each ride and use that instead – it will slightly underestimate the stress as HR doesn’t show the ‘anaerobic component’ but in my opinion, it is a little more reliable than TRIMP and if you use TSS, ATL, CTL, TSB metrics then you can integrate your mtb with road training and manage your overall training load a bit better.

‘Ski squats’ are good for mtb descending – you ‘pedal’ on the road bike all/most the time (and sitting mainly), whereas you may have to simply ‘brace your legs’ when descending on the mtb (off the saddle) as you navigate the trail – quite a difference!

Yep, you can monitor progress over time when you are doing intervals if you use the road bike and the power meter – you should see decent changes before too long. Also, if you have soem decent analysis software, have a look at the cadence/torque/power graphs and check that you are developing across the range.

A bit of extra muscle up top can help, and if you start to feel in in your upper body then a little supplemental weight work may help. If you feel OK though, spend the time on the bike – a nice side effect of just riding the mtb is an increase in upper body muscle.

EDIT – think of TSS as the comparison, not distance/speed and all is well in the world.

The Sporttracks software gives me my ATL, CTL and TSB which works well. Use this with all my training and daily activities. The plug in if interested is training load well worth the look.
Iv found over the winter I cross train on a concept 2, I find this a great way of developing upper body aswell as great engine work.
Thanks for the input. Time to go practice.

Rooney. I have a similar background to you. Triathlete (did usual progression from sprint to half IM) then got bored and fed up with pricing etc so looked at different challenges such as XC tri’s, duathlons adventure racing etc

Two first observations from Mtb riding were (1) I needed to improve technique quickly(crashed loads in first XTT events) and (2) as labmonkey alludes too, the Mtb legs on an XTT were far more tiring/ draining than the bike leg on a tri. Combination of higher intensity uphills and more concentration required due to challenge of the terrain.

But it worked for me as I was looking to cut back in distance events in favour of shorter stuff so the greater intensity of MTB suited me. Of course, it then becomes slightly addictive. My worry is that better value MTB events will soon disappear – just look at he silly pricing on equipment these days! Tri stuff now seems good value which is ridiculous!!

If you are looking for the kind of tritalk advice on here, my experience is that barring great stuff from individuals like labmonkey above, you may be a little disappointed!.

Interested in ski squat advice above as riding with lower saddles on techie stuff places different stresses on your leg muscles in my experience.

Oh it would be nice not to be the only rider in longer XC events to use a bento box!!!!

Double post edit

Hi mate, yeh was looking for similar to tritalk.

Sounds similar to yourself although I’m having a year off long as mrs is expecting end of October. So short hard and fast stuff sounds like I can fit in especially as Glentress on doorstep.
Still have ambitions of a Sub 10 IM and ……. Hawaii!

Definitely the legs hurt more when not pedalling different use of muscles so kettlebells and squats will be tried. The skills side is the hard bit as going up hill is fine…. It’s the down and cornering fast.
When comparing heart rate files Mtb is just interval / fartlek training.

Your right about the bento box and also Lycra!!! Did the Glentress 7 and had s bento box on bike ….. No idea how many liked the idea of it though .

Got a great duathlons series up here over winter £20 for 3 Mtb duathlons races.

Lab monkey sounds like a top knowledgeable geezer/bird to me!

Some skils training?
http://www.ridelines.co.uk/
http://www.dirtschool.co.uk/

Lab monkey sounds like a top knowledgeable geezer/bird to me!

Yep agree

Some skils training?
http://www.ridelines.co.uk/
http://www.dirtschool.co.uk

Been on ridelines course Andy is a great guy as is Andy from Dirtschool not tried him yet though.

Lab monkey sounds like a top knowledgeable geezer/bird to me!

‘Geezer’ – and thanks, that is very kind.

A few years ago I used to race ‘elite xc’ and I spent ages reading everything I could get my hands on about training and racing – and with a fair amount of hard work I ended up a ‘pretty good’ racer. Then I decided in my mid twenties to go back to university and do a sport and exercise science degree, and it was soon evident that most of the stuff that I had read previously was at best – a bit ‘out of date’ and at worst – ‘completely wrong’. I enjoyed all of this ‘tinkering about’ and reading new ‘stuff’ and so I was lucky to get a scholarship for a PhD straight after my degree. Without getting to technical, I spent four years looking at muscle energetics and fatigue mechanisms during ‘endurance exercise’ – now we were getting into the real good stuff – the stuff that I wish I knew when I was racing!

In reality, the human body (and especially the muscle and cardiovascular system) behave in a predictable manner and if you understand how it works, and can identify the physiological/biochemical strengths and weaknesses of an individual you can then design very effective training plans that WILL enhance performance (unless you have a Tour winner or an Olympic champion, nobody is at their peak). Having a laboratory to measure ‘stuff’ helps, and collecting power meter data puts everything into the context of the real world, and the latter allows you to track progress over time – this is essential to get the most out of your training – both in terms of making sure that the ‘composition’ of the training is right, and also to ensure that the rate of development over time is optimal and that enough recovery time to adapt to the training stimulus.

Anyway, I have ‘gone off on one a bit there’ – sorry. haha

The best book I read was ‘Cycle racing – training to win’, by Les somebody if I remember. The basic fitness for road and mtb training is very similar hence so many top MTB riders make the transition to road relatively quickly.

I assume the OP wants to approach biking for fitness and racing rather than bunny hopping over logs with 6 inch travel and padding on.

Cheers Jon

I too got myself a BSc in sport and exercise sciences and now lecture at Staffs Uni. Sadly, I was shuffled down the excessive teaching route and never have time to do the research or read up on it to the extent you have.

I did manage to get BASES accreditation though and set up my own facility in my garage, pretty tarty garage actually, more like a lab now

I like the way you chop down the sport in to it’s demands and work from the ground up, sounds very Brailsford-esque. I came from time trialing a couple if years ago and like you say, very thresholdy and steady compared to the explosive-recover strategy you need for this. Training is very different these days, most rides are interval sessions off road with out even knowing it, would love a power meter off road to get some idea of what was going on

Andy – I am lucky – I get to play around doing my hobby for a job, couldn’t ask for much more to be honest.

Powermeter files from a mtb are a little scary at first glance – very stochastic in nature and you will be surprised how much people skimp on peddling. It doesn’t represent the energy cost of standing on the pedals and supporting your body weight though – you need torque AND cadence to display power. This is a limitation of power meters on a mtb. I am presently trying to find a ‘nice’ way of putting a power meter on my singlespeed – that data would be interesting.

I’d love to know if anyone’s worked out how to measure power applied through pumping – I’ve been pondering it for a while and can’t think of any way to do it…

Labmonkey – cheap track SRM for singlespeed? Or ergomo?
I think the point you make about the energy cost of standing on pedals is massive and a stress score from a powermeter would miss this out. I know when a run the day after a Mtb my quads are similar to a hard off road run when downhill running kills the quads. This maybe a way I can train my legs for standing on pedals, I’ll let you know.
As iv said before I find this part the hardest at present but expect the muscles to get used to it once on a Mtb daily training etc.

Rooney – definitely not an ergomo. I had been looking at SRM’s and Quarq’s but neither have a ‘perfect’ solution. The SRM BMX has a single ring, but they need to be pretty big (40+ teeth) an they are quite heavy. Both do some nice MTB 2 x 10 chainsets that are light enough, especially once you remove the outer chainring, but you then get left with the outer chainring tabs which are a little unsightly – considered a discreet bashguard but haven;t found one that I like yet. Maybe SRAm will bring out a Quarq for the XX-1 crankset – that would be PERFECT!

You could look to ADD soem extra TSS for a given duration of off road riding in addition to a PM derived value – so maybe, 10-15 points per hour – this is an educated guess – an it might be something that I could investigate in my lab – hmmm, thinking cap on – the O2 cost of standing on the pedals for extended periods… hmmm.

Lumpy treadmill, downhill riding, gas analysis…got to be a way 🙂

Actually, what am I saying. We’ve got a Cortex portable system here if you fancy collaborating.

Andy – I was just thinking about putting our Oxycon Pro in a kids trailer and heading to Coed-y-Brenin.

ps. After you with the downhill riding on a treadmill. Try it.

Power2Max for ‘affordable’ crank based power meter? I know some folks have issues with drift, but cheaper than a Quarq, and vastly cheaper than an SRM! Sure you could get a permutation to work with SS – several options for 64/104 BCD.

Tempted to change from my PowerTap as I don’t really ‘train’ anymore, just ride my bike, so the power numbers are just for a bit of interest, prefer the idea of being able to use nice light wheels without spending thousands, and sticking it on my MTB would be interesting!

Maybe SRAm will bring out a Quarq for the XX-1 crankset – that would be PERFECT!

They will!

On straightforward power meters for SS, this looks interesting. AFAIK LH Shimano cranks are all the same ‘width’ on the BB axle, so you can get a 105 LH crank with power meter for $699 then stick it on whatever bike you want.

njee20 – spotted that on cyclingnews this morning.

At first glance it looks ok, the price is tempting also. I do wonder about its accuracy though – I would need to see a bit more of the data than just that screen shot. Although it looks ‘similar’ to the powertap, they are presenting 30 second average data – that is pretty well filtered. And, if you look at the end of the sample there appears to be pretty big discrepancies (although thy neglect to highlight the axes in any useful way so we can’t see the magnitude of the difference) in the data. Just giving a +/- value doesn’t wash with me I am afraid, +/- relative to what exactly? What is the sampling frequency? Can the user adjust the algorithm at all – this would be cool as I recon I could get the left/right balance sorted if I calibrated it to lab data.

Despite all the negativity, I will be watching this product over the coming months.

I completely agree, the whole notion that it calculates it based on the deflection of the crank arm and the cadence, and then extrapolates the power sounds like there’s a lot of margin for error.

It’s also not much cheaper than a Power2Max chainset over here, and P2M are about to do a couple of firmware updates that will address some of the failings of the first version. It does look very interesting though and I’ll keep an eye out for it.

What about the garmin vector ……. Whenever they come out? Could they be used on all your bikes? Maybe easy Mtb rides …. Wouldn’t want to bash them? Or even better a Mtb set!!!

Ops!