Tips for building base fitness for time poor dh riders

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Tips for building base fitness for time poor dh riders
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Posted: Dec 23, 2013 at 23:35 Quote
Hi all.

I'm after some tips for building my strength and fitness to race dh again next year. I can get out once a week for an hr on the xc bike and 2-3 hrs once in a while too. I have a bmx track at the end of my street and go to gates twice a week for an hr. I can also fit in a few hrs of dh runs most Sunday's. I work 13hr days mon- fri and 8.5hrs on sat and some Sunday's also. Also have a wife and 10 month old daughter to spend time with. I guess I'm mainly after advice on how to manage my time indoors better. I have a road bike set up on rollers in my garage and it is easy for me to either do a workout before bed or a workout before work. Not so keen on the before work workouts as that means a 3:00am start. Was going to do a half hr circuit a few nights a week doing body weight exercises and something on the indoor trainer aswell.

Hardest thing for me at the moment is motivation. By the time I get home feed the baby have tea etc all I want to do is drink beer on the couch. Slowly I have been doing more and more exercise and less on the beers.

Cheers Reece.

Posted: Dec 24, 2013 at 12:07 Quote
Is it an option for you to commute to/from work by bike? That's sorta "free" time you'd be sitting in a car or bus anyway.

Posted: Dec 24, 2013 at 14:12 Quote
I have thought of that, I used to always ride my bike to work when I'm working in town but it's not the most practical thing for me at the moment with the job I'm doing.

Posted: Dec 30, 2013 at 18:23 Quote
Bmx track start doing full laps @80%, then start decreasing rest between them. Pump laps (no pedals) are super good too.

Gates are a waste IMO. You don't need Bmx power, that's like 30 seconds. You need 3-8 minute power, right?

What do you have access to?

Indoor Trainer (XC or road bike hooks up to)?
Coffee? Espresso?

The two above will help.

HIIT intervals, plyometrics, isometrics.

Motivation is tough. Especially with a baby and unpredictable sleep.

When you wake try doing 100 burpees every day, when your arms and legs have a bunch of lactate in AM for 2 days in a row rest and do ab stuff That day.

Sleep as good as ya can when you can. Motivation has to be on you. You either want it - or you don't. If you want to not train remind yourself what losing feels like. If that doesn't move you... Well..

I'll be happy to offer help if I can.

Posted: Dec 31, 2013 at 13:49 Quote
Motivation is the biggest killer. By the time I get home from work all I want to do is sit on the couch. Downloaded James Wilson's body weight workout the other day so I have a variety of stuff to keep me interested. I have my road bike hooked up to the indoor trainer and lights for my am bike. I did a few dh runs on Monday. Def got some work to do fitness wise to get to where I want to be.

Posted: Jan 23, 2014 at 9:39 Quote
HIIT or Interval training if you do it right will take about 30 minutes, You'll get fit fast and increase your VO2 max in a short space of time. A quick example I pulled from a website is this

Build power and train your body to recover quickly between efforts for events that demand repeated surges. In a medium to large gear, push hard for 40 seconds; recover 20 seconds. Repeat 10 times. That’s one set. Do up to four, resting five minutes between sets.

I wouldn't start off with that as it will probably have you near vomiting after the first set. Best start with you rest period longer than your effort period and then as you train bring down your rest and bring your effort up until your effort is more than you rest. Just stick HIIT or interval training for bikes into google and you'll find loads of different ways of doing intervals, just pick one you think will suit you and start with that. One thing to remember when it says push hard you want to be pushing as hard as you can for that period, you'll soon start to fatigue but you'll improve very quickly.

Intervals are horrible when you first start but you'll learn to love them when you see the results.

Posted: Jan 26, 2014 at 18:33 Quote
Thanks mate I'll look into the intervals on the bike. Prob try do it at the bmx track to make it more fun. I have been doing the James Wilson body weight workout the last few weeks and I have made some big improvements. I struggled to do the basic phase 1 workout when I started and just did my first phase 1 workout at full reps.

Posted: Jan 28, 2014 at 4:53 Quote
HIIT is intense, its an all out effort at 100% so I would as a point of caution make sure you are healthy to do so, its usually recommenced to get a check up from the doctor before doing things that intense.

But it will get you fit very fast, its not so much a base builder it focuses mostly on improving your V02 max and anaerobic fitness, which for downhill is really what you need, If you want to do long and more aerobic base training look into the time crunched cyclist by Chris Carmichael it assumes you have about 6 hours a week. But again this is very road ride specific but will focus plenty on aerobic fitness.

I guess it depends on goals, lots of trainers still include base training because it supports the rider through the season to maintain higher levels of stress and not burn out. many other feel base training is a dead concept. personally you need both aerobic and anaerobic development which really only training both will adapt.

Posted: Jan 29, 2014 at 8:17 Quote
I agree HIIT is very demanding but the results speak for themselves. HIIT training is usually performed under perceived effort, rather than heart monitors. So maybe if you do decide to try it make your perceived effort around 7/10 to start with, with long rest periods and as you progress bring your effort up bit by bit.

Base training has its advantages but it can be counter productive. Base training is generally used by pros or people who have a lot of time to spare in the saddle upwards of 20 hrs a week really. If you're going to struggle to fit in less than half that you simply aren't clocking up enough saddle time to elicit any training stress and training stress is the key. You don't have hours to slowly tax your system, you need to do shorter more focused rides to stimulate fitness adaptations. I have read that you can get the same amount of training stress in a 90 min tempo interval ride as a 3 hr endurance ride.

Posted: Jan 29, 2014 at 19:30 Quote
quickhips wrote:
I agree HIIT is very demanding but the results speak for themselves. HIIT training is usually performed under perceived effort, rather than heart monitors. So maybe if you do decide to try it make your perceived effort around 7/10 to start with, with long rest periods and as you progress bring your effort up bit by bit.

Base training has its advantages but it can be counter productive. Base training is generally used by pros or people who have a lot of time to spare in the saddle upwards of 20 hrs a week really. If you're going to struggle to fit in less than half that you simply aren't clocking up enough saddle time to elicit any training stress and training stress is the key. You don't have hours to slowly tax your system, you need to do shorter more focused rides to stimulate fitness adaptations. I have read that you can get the same amount of training stress in a 90 min tempo interval ride as a 3 hr endurance ride.

The only thing I'd add is training stress is not really accurate. It may be true that 90min of tempo riding is similar to 3hours of aerobic riding but while the overall stress may be the same the area the stress is applied and adaptions that stress causes can be very different.

Aerobic work uses a very different energy system to anerobic it also comes with different adaptions to the bodies systems.

overall stress is important to balance training and avoid over training but we also need to consider the type of stress in each session and what system and adaptions it is actually effecting.

Posted: Jan 30, 2014 at 12:36 Quote
You guys can make this way complicated.

Practice going fast. Really fast.

I grew up trying to ride over my head every day. I'd crash at least once a day. If I didn't I wasn't trying and definitely not getting better.

Build more endurance than you need to finish a race - but not much more.

Run a big chainring and learn to love suffering. Run normal gears on race days. Boom - instant perceived (and actual) increase in power.

Don't spend more time with excell and books than you do with your bike.

Eat healthy food and not crap. Drink water (not water with stuff in it). Get quality sleep often.

If your fat quit eating so much. If your skinny eat more egg whites and chicken.

Most people just talk the talk- then don't do any of the actions to get them there. That's what seperates us from them.

Done.

Now go win a world championship!

Posted: Jan 30, 2014 at 18:48 Quote
Grosey wrote:
You guys can make this way complicated.

Practice going fast. Really fast.

I grew up trying to ride over my head every day. I'd crash at least once a day. If I didn't I wasn't trying and definitely not getting better.

Build more endurance than you need to finish a race - but not much more.

Run a big chainring and learn to love suffering. Run normal gears on race days. Boom - instant perceived (and actual) increase in power.

Don't spend more time with excell and books than you do with your bike.

Eat healthy food and not crap. Drink water (not water with stuff in it). Get quality sleep often.

If your fat quit eating so much. If your skinny eat more egg whites and chicken.

Most people just talk the talk- then don't do any of the actions to get them there. That's what seperates us from them.

Done.

Now go win a world championship!

id add you need to practice going slow too.
Too many people try to go faster and they are still braking or they go faster by pedaling but then slow down into other sections, or they hit sections way too over their head and stuff up constantly never really getting any faster, sometimes the best thing you can do is actually slow down to where you don't need to brake than go from there slowly increase speed, it will make you also slowly adapt to the speed. You'll find you will be hitting sections faster than before but wont feel in over your head so you will actually not only surpass your speed but your limit will be much higher too.

Personally going slower to go faster is one of the best things i have done for my riding.

Practice at full speed and slow both very helpful.

Posted: Jan 30, 2014 at 19:27 Quote
Grosey wrote:
You guys can make this way complicated.

Practice going fast. Really fast.

I grew up trying to ride over my head every day. I'd crash at least once a day. If I didn't I wasn't trying and definitely not getting better.

Build more endurance than you need to finish a race - but not much more.

Run a big chainring and learn to love suffering. Run normal gears on race days. Boom - instant perceived (and actual) increase in power.

Don't spend more time with excell and books than you do with your bike.

Eat healthy food and not crap. Drink water (not water with stuff in it). Get quality sleep often.

If your fat quit eating so much. If your skinny eat more egg whites and chicken.

Most people just talk the talk- then don't do any of the actions to get them there. That's what seperates us from them.

Done.

That's gold.

Now go win a world championship!

O+
Posted: Feb 4, 2014 at 6:33 Quote
Eat healthy by far number 1 advice!!!

Regular light weights everyday different body part!

30 mins on a intense exercise bike, mine came with pre programmed rides.

Lots of stretching and or yoga!

Did I mention EAT HEALTHY. No bread,cheese,minimal sugar, no trans fats!

Posted: Feb 4, 2014 at 6:43 Quote
jeff444 wrote:
Eat healthy by far number 1 advice!!!

Regular light weights everyday different body part!

30 mins on a intense exercise bike, mine came with pre programmed rides.

Lots of stretching and or yoga!

Did I mention EAT HEALTHY. No bread,cheese,minimal sugar, no trans fats!

No bread?

reason behind this?

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