The Riding For A Lifetime Podcast James Wilson - MTB Strength Training Systems

Over the last 5-10 years my cardio training program has changed a lot. 
My old plan was to ride 5+ days a week and hit some hard intervals after my workouts. But now I can’t ride as much as I used to and my body can’t take the wear and tear of hard interval training for very long. 
With this new reality I’ve found myself using different training methods that I did in the past to not only keep me fit for trail riding but also to improve my health and longevity. I’ve posted some podcasts and blog posts about these different training methods but I’ve never gone over them all together and explained how I combine them all into a comprehensive program.
In this episode of The Riding For A Lifetime Podcast I explain why I use the training methods I do and how you can use them as a part of your training plan.
You can find a great breathing resource to help you learn more by clicking here.
You can learn more about Anti Glycolytic Training by checking out this post/ podcast.
Until next time…
Ride Strong,
James Wilson

When it comes to building MTB specific cardio, the best method is to actually ride your bike - that is the most sport specific training you can do. However, there are times when you can’t ride as much as you would like or you want to focus on specific qualities that you need on the trail but don’t use enough on the trail to continue to improve.
There are also health benefits that you can get from a smart conditioning program that you can’t get from riding alone. This means that if you want to maximize your performance and your health then cardio training has to be part of your overall plan.
In this episode of the Riding For A Lifetime Podcast I share a new cardio training method that I feel has a lot of potential for the 40+ year old rider.
Let me know if you have any questions or need help getting started with this workout. This is just one way to go about it and I’ll be sharing more workout ideas with you as I get a chance to test them.
Until next time…
Ride Strong,
James Wilson
MTB Strength Training Systems

Low Back Pain is one of the most common things that riders suffer from both on and off the bike. It can ruin the good time that mountain biking is supposed to provide for us and in extreme cases can even make riders quit riding.
Even more frustrating is that there doesn’t seem to be a consistent, predictable pattern with low back pain and it is often a mystery as to the specific underlying cause. But if you ignore it then it tends to get worse until you have to deal with it.
I have experience with Low Back Pain both as a trainer who has helped riders overcome it but also as someone who has suffered from it. A long time ago I tweaked my back trying to deadlift too much weight and if I don’t stay on top of it my back gets stiff and sore, plus I have to be conscious of it while training.
This journey to find solutions for myself and the riders I’ve worked with has led me to discover some things that I feel can help a lot of riders out there. A lot of these things aren’t your typical “stretch your hip flexors” advice you usually hear and they fill in some gaps that I think a lot of riders are missing in their attempts to fix their Low Back pain.
First, before we get to the specific advice,  make sure that there isn’t something medically wrong with your back. Have a doctor check it out and see if there is something specific going on like a pinched nerve or a bulging disc. 
But if there isn’t something specific wrong with your lower back and it just hurts at any time then there may be a few things you can do to help improve the situation.
Here are 8 things that I’ve found can help improve your Low Back Pain:
Be aware of your breathing.
Improve your Hip Flexor strength with Isometric Exercises.
Improve Hip mobility.
Improve Spinal mobility.
Have a Warm Up and a Pre-Ride Routine.
Stand up for High Tension efforts.
Use Flat Pedals.
Use a Strength Training Program that creates a well balanced body.
Be Aware Of Your Breathing.
How you breathe affects a lot of things in your body, including your lower back. Several studies have found a link between bad breathing habits and low back pain, IMO most likely due to the inability of the core to properly stabilize under load (poor core stability has also been linked to low back pain).
This means that you could be doing everything else right and still have low back pain. It’s a low hanging fruit that can make a big difference so you may as well make it a part of your overall strategy.
Good breathing will help to stabilize the midsection and reinforce good posture. You want to be aware of and practice good breathing habits on the bike, in the gym and during your everyday life.
You can check out this post to learn more about optimal breathing habits and how to assess and optimize your breathing habits.
Strengthen the Hip Flexors with Isometric Exercises. 
The recommendation to strengthen the hip flexors might come as a surprise to some riders. We’ve been told for years that the problem was tight hip flexors and that we should avoid exercising them directly and focusing instead on stretching them.
I’ve found that this doesn’t consistently fix the problem and that there isn’t a direct correlation to a muscle being “tight” and it also being strong. A weak muscle creates its own set of problems that need to be addressed and in some cases, addressing the strength issue helps with the mobility/ ROM issues.
I’ve also found that using Isometric Exercises to strengthen the Hip Flexors offers a way to safely strengthen them, which can be an issue with movement based exercises. The 4 best Isometric Exercises that I’ve found for this purpose are the Single Leg Hip Flexor and Glute Bridge, Squat and Lunge.
Start with wherever you're at and work up to holding the weakest point of the movement that you can get into with good posture and breathing for 60-90 seconds. Do them 1-3 times a week, focusing on improving your ROM and breathing each week along with the time you are

As you get older, strength training changes from a “good to do” to a “must do” status. Losing your strength, muscle and power are all realities for the 40+ year old rider and strength training is the best way to slow that process down.
This is the #1 tactic for riders who want to do this for a lifetime - get and stay strong and you’ll avoid age-related physical decline for as long as possible.  
Plus, improving your strength, power and muscle mass can help improve performance and reduce your risk of injury, so it helps now and acts as insurance against future losses. And while a lot of things can help, if you want to maximize your results there are some basic principles that the 40+ year old rider should be observing.
First, almost anything can “work” but it eventually stops working and it may not build the strength and fitness you need for riding. The goal is to follow a training program that will help us on the path towards riding for a lifetime: improving our MTB specific fitness and our overall longevity/ health.
With that in mind, here are some basic guidelines to help you with designing or choosing a training program.
Podcast Notes:
2-4 days a week is plenty and the specific number depends on how much you are riding and your ability to recover.
The more you are riding and the more important your performance the fewer days you will lift.
The more you are trying to focus on strength training/ building muscle the more often you need to lift.
So this breaks down to 2 days a week during the riding season and 3-4 days a week in the off season depending on time available and goals.
You want to focus on big, compound movements but doing some isolation exercises won’t make you dysfunctional and can be beneficial in some cases.
You want to focus on getting stronger or doing more volume with the main movement patterns and the exercises that train them - Squat, Hinge, Push, Pull, Carry and Rotate.I’d also break them up into unilateral and bilateral exercises

But doing some isolation exercises like curls and tricep extensions can help with total body isometric strength as well as help with muscle building/ preservation.
You want to use a variety of set and rep schemes, with the bulk of them focusing on the 2-4 sets of 3-8 reps. 
2-4 sets is enough volume to build strength and power without excessive fatigue.
3-8 reps covers the strength and power end as it gets into the hypertrophy end of things, giving you a variety of training stimuli to pick from.
I’d recommend 80% of your training falling in this range and the other 20% falling into the higher rep ranges, going up to 20-30 reps.
I don’t recommend spending time in the 1-2 rep range as the risk to benefit ratio isn’t high enough for me to be comfortable with recommending to most riders.
You don’t need to train to failure to see results and IMO it should be avoided as a 40+ year old rider.
There is a lot of science that tells us that you don’t need to train to failure (or beyond) to see results.
You can train to near failure and see the same results while also saving your body some wear and tear and also lowering your injury risk.
Training to within 1-3 reps of failure is plenty to see results. This usually occurs when you start to slow down the concentric portion of the exercise, so as long as you go until you start to slow down then you are fine.
Leaving 3-1 Reps In Reserve (RIR) also helps avoid injury since the closer you get to failure the more likely you are to see a technical breakdown that can lead to an acute or overuse injury.
Don’t use bodypart training and instead focus on total body or upper body/ lower body splits.
Using bodypart training split (where you train the body by body parts like Chest, Back, Legs, Biceps, ect.) is a great way to build muscle but not the best way to build functional strength and power.
Like I mentioned before, you want to focus on training movement patterns and so you want to divide your workouts based on t

In this episode of the Riding For A Lifetime Podcast I share with you my morning routine that helps me set my day on a good trajectory. 
Maximizing your health and longevity becomes a big priority as you get older. You can get away with abusing your body in your 20’s and still being able to get after it but if you want to be able to perform well on a consistent basis into your 40’s and beyond you have to start making good daily habits a part of your routine.
Over the last several years I’ve developed a morning routine that I feel has helped me slow down the performance decline and maximize my results from training. Remember that training actually breaks your body down and how well you support the recovery process plays a big role in how hard you can train and what results you see from your training.
You can stream this episode or download the MP3 file by clicking the link below. You‌ ‌can‌ also find the podcast ‌on‌ ‌‌Itunes‌,‌‌ ‌Podbean‌,‌‌ ‌‌Spotify‌‌ ‌‌and‌ ‌all‌ ‌other‌ ‌major‌ ‌podcasting‌ ‌platforms.‌ ‌
Click Here To Stream This Episode or Download The MP3 File
The three things that I do every morning are…
Hydrate with water and electrolytes, particularly sodium.
Breathwork drills like Box Breathing or Super Ventilation + Breath Holds (a.k.a. Wim Hof style breathing).
Cold water exposure.
First, hydration with sodium. After waking up I drink 16 ounces of water with a supplement called LMNT (I pronounce it Lemon T but it is supposed to be pronounced Element), which contains 1 gram of sodium along with 200 mg of potassium and 60 mg of magnesium. 
Yes, I know that the FDA says that we should be limiting sodium intake but there are a lot of holes in their recommendations. Robb Wolf is a founder of LMNT and he has done a lot of great work on illuminating the difference between what we’re told by the FDA and what the research on sodium intake actually says.
While a fat, pre-diabetic person who doesn’t exercise and eats a lot of fast food probably doesn’t need extra sodium, if you are reasonably fit, workout on a regular basis and try to eat whole foods then odds are pretty high that you could stand to use more sodium in your diet.
Several studies have shown that there is a sweet spot for sodium intake between 4-6 grams a day that result in optimal health outcomes. Restricting sodium intake to less than this has been linked to higher incidents of high blood pressure and cardiovascular death (ironically the things we’re told that low sodium diets are supposed to protect us against).
By starting your day off with a gram of sodium you are hydrating your body in a healthy way since water without sodium can throw off fluid balance. Sodium helps to regulate fluid outside your cells and potassium helps to regulate fluid inside your cells so your body needs these minerals to maintain optimal fluid balance. 
If you don’t get enough of these minerals from your diet then your body will leach them from your bones - along with calcium, which can weaken the bones and is something you want to avoid as an older athlete. 
I usually take another 1-2 LMNTs throughout the day, especially if I’m doing something that causes me to sweat a lot, like going for a bike ride. If you have low energy, brain fog, muscle cramps or even recurring headaches it may be a result of low sodium intake, in which case increasing your sodium intake can have a massive impact on your health and performance.
The second thing I do is spend 10-15 minutes doing some kind of breathwork. I’ve talked a lot about how better breathing can impact your health, performance and even your mood and so starting the day with some focused breathing drills can make a big difference in how your day unfolds.
My two favorite breathing drills are Box Breathing or Wim Hof style breathing. 
Box Breathing has you assign a time to the four parts of your breath - the inhale, hold at the top of the inhale,

The term “MTB Specific Training” gets thrown around a lot but what does it really mean?
At its core, it means using a training program that helps you ride faster, longer and with more skill. While the most “MTB specific” thing you can do is to actually ride your bike, there are certainly things you can do off of the bike that can help.
In the gym this takes the form of strength training that improves your strength and movement quality in ways that help your riding. Strength is one of the more general physical attributes, meaning that what works for an athlete in one sport will generally work for another.
About 80-90% of what you do with an athlete will be the same from sport to sport but there are some MTB specific things you can do to enhance your results. And no, this doesn’t mean using light loads and high reps because you need to build more endurance.
In general, getting stronger in the 2-4 sets X 5-10 reps range will get you what you need. You can benefit from time spent outside of this range but this should make up the bulk of your strength training. You should also focus on the basic movement patterns of Push, Pull, Squat and Hinge.
But once you have the basics covered there are some exercises that will help your MTB specific results.
You can stream this episode or download the MP3 file by clicking the link below. You‌ ‌can‌ also find the podcast ‌on‌ ‌‌Itunes‌,‌‌ ‌Podbean‌,‌‌ ‌‌Spotify‌‌ ‌‌and‌ ‌all‌ ‌other‌ ‌major‌ ‌podcasting‌ ‌platforms.‌ ‌
Show Notes:
Windmill
If there was one exercise that I wish every mountain biker would add to their program it is this one.
This movement is the core movement pattern behind cornering on your bike and the #1 reason that most riders struggle with this skill is because they lack it.
It is also an essential skill for riding switchbacks and, coupled with track stands, would make it much easier for riders to execute this skill as well.
You can do it with no weight using a stick on your back.
You can also weight it by holding a weight over your head or by using a Steel Mace on your back.
I recommend checking out the videos I have posted at https://www.bikejames.com/strength/carving-faster-corners-with-the-stick-and-kb-windmill/ to learn more about how to execute this movement in the most MTB specific way possible because there is a lot of bad instruction around this movement.
In general, you are getting into a pedal stance position with your feet and shifting your weight to the back leg while rotating your shoulders as you hinge back.
If you do this movement and struggle to keep your weight on the back leg then you are “tipping” over instead of “corkscrewing” your way down, which is how you end up leaning too far inside of a corner and crashing.
BTW, the lack of this movement pattern is what has led to the “lean your bike and not your body” advice, which is wrong. You have to lean your body but you have to do it in a balanced way.
This is also a great way to work out the differences between right and left cornering that most riders have.
I recommend doing 2 sets of 5 reps for this exercise although you can also do the Stick Windmill on a daily basis as part of your mobility plan.
2. Elevated Lunge
This is something I started using a few months ago and I really like it for improving a rider's Standing Pedaling ability.
It has you using a box that is 6-12 inches high and stepping back into a lunge.
It is a cross between a step up and a lunge and it really works on the range of motion in the hip flexors.
Lunging is the movement pattern behind Standing Pedaling and elevating your front leg helps build the movement skill of being able to stand up and pedal without rounding the low back to make up for a lack of ROM in the hip flexors.
Plus, it targets the glutes a bit more since you are getting more of a stretch at the bottom, which helps with pedaling power and looking good from behind.
I recommend doing