53 min
My Biggest Training Mistakes & Lessons Learned The Riding For A Lifetime Podcast
-
- Deportes
Something that I try to impress on my kids is the importance of being able to admit when you are wrong and make a change. Too often we spend our time trying to justify why we do what we do rather than trying to challenge it and see if it holds up.
But that isn’t how we grow. There is a saying about how there is a difference between 10 years of experience and the same year of experience repeated 10 times. For too many people they end up repeating the same things over and over and never really grow or gain experience.
One of the areas in my life where this is most apparent is training. I’ve been working out for over 35 years, I’ve been a professional trainer for over 20 years and I’ve been working with mountain bikers since 2005. And in that time you better believe that I’ve made some mistakes and learned some valuable lessons.
In this podcast I wanted to share some of those lessons with you. Hopefully you can learn from some of these mistakes and avoid the same problems I ran into.
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.
You can also read a summary article from the notes for the podcast below…
Not doing any “isolation” or “bodybuilding”/ Focusing too much on “functional training”
I’ve talked about this a lot lately but something I’ve been doing more of in the last few years is more isolation and bodybuilding type training.
I came up at an interesting time in the strength and conditioning field where we were making the switch from bodybuilding to Functional Training. The problem is that you need “isolation” exercises - which build isometric strength and joint strength - and you need bodybuilding type training to build and hold onto muscle mass.
You can train like a bodybuilder and still be functional if you are doing other stuff outside of the gym. Plus, as you get older muscle mass becomes a valuable commodity and needs to be trained for.
Using too much unstable surface training
This is one I haven’t been using for a while but back in the day I was really into unstable surface training.
I was around when the Swiss Balls first got introduced to the fitness field through a guy named Paul Chek. The rationale behind UST seemed good and I ended up with every size Swiss Ball you could get and used them for just about everything.
The problem was that I couldn’t get strong or add size, I just got better at balancing on things while lifting weights. Several studies have shown that UST lowers motor unit recruitment, results in lower strength and muscle gains and have very limited carryover to other activities.
In other words, it may look cool on Instagram but the results are lacking.
Giving too much weight to strength training
This is a common mistake with new strength coaches.
I had seen how getting stronger had helped me and so it made sense that getting stronger would make you a better athlete. I had literally tried to talk some of my athletes into skipping sport training so they wouldn’t miss strength training.
The problem is that strength training is only the most important thing you can do if you are really weak, and even then your sport training should still take precedence. The only thing that will make you a better mountain biker is time on the bike and strength training is supposed to support that, not take away from it.
Thinking that Long Slow Distance training was a waste of time
This is a bit of a tricky one because context matters a lot here.
One of the first things I got known for in the MTB world was advocating for the use of High Intensity Intervals instead of Aerobic Base Training for MTB. Back in 2005 this was unheard of since roadie training programs dominated the scene.
A lot of riders who followed these programs felt that they weren
Something that I try to impress on my kids is the importance of being able to admit when you are wrong and make a change. Too often we spend our time trying to justify why we do what we do rather than trying to challenge it and see if it holds up.
But that isn’t how we grow. There is a saying about how there is a difference between 10 years of experience and the same year of experience repeated 10 times. For too many people they end up repeating the same things over and over and never really grow or gain experience.
One of the areas in my life where this is most apparent is training. I’ve been working out for over 35 years, I’ve been a professional trainer for over 20 years and I’ve been working with mountain bikers since 2005. And in that time you better believe that I’ve made some mistakes and learned some valuable lessons.
In this podcast I wanted to share some of those lessons with you. Hopefully you can learn from some of these mistakes and avoid the same problems I ran into.
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.
You can also read a summary article from the notes for the podcast below…
Not doing any “isolation” or “bodybuilding”/ Focusing too much on “functional training”
I’ve talked about this a lot lately but something I’ve been doing more of in the last few years is more isolation and bodybuilding type training.
I came up at an interesting time in the strength and conditioning field where we were making the switch from bodybuilding to Functional Training. The problem is that you need “isolation” exercises - which build isometric strength and joint strength - and you need bodybuilding type training to build and hold onto muscle mass.
You can train like a bodybuilder and still be functional if you are doing other stuff outside of the gym. Plus, as you get older muscle mass becomes a valuable commodity and needs to be trained for.
Using too much unstable surface training
This is one I haven’t been using for a while but back in the day I was really into unstable surface training.
I was around when the Swiss Balls first got introduced to the fitness field through a guy named Paul Chek. The rationale behind UST seemed good and I ended up with every size Swiss Ball you could get and used them for just about everything.
The problem was that I couldn’t get strong or add size, I just got better at balancing on things while lifting weights. Several studies have shown that UST lowers motor unit recruitment, results in lower strength and muscle gains and have very limited carryover to other activities.
In other words, it may look cool on Instagram but the results are lacking.
Giving too much weight to strength training
This is a common mistake with new strength coaches.
I had seen how getting stronger had helped me and so it made sense that getting stronger would make you a better athlete. I had literally tried to talk some of my athletes into skipping sport training so they wouldn’t miss strength training.
The problem is that strength training is only the most important thing you can do if you are really weak, and even then your sport training should still take precedence. The only thing that will make you a better mountain biker is time on the bike and strength training is supposed to support that, not take away from it.
Thinking that Long Slow Distance training was a waste of time
This is a bit of a tricky one because context matters a lot here.
One of the first things I got known for in the MTB world was advocating for the use of High Intensity Intervals instead of Aerobic Base Training for MTB. Back in 2005 this was unheard of since roadie training programs dominated the scene.
A lot of riders who followed these programs felt that they weren
53 min