Back in February, we met up with the guys from GT Factory Racing at Atherton HQ in North Wales. It was a bit cold, but we had a few laughs, tested out some new products and learned a bit about off-season training. Cheers to Dan, Gee, Rachel Marc and Taylor for letting us come up and hang out!
Gad dam! Dont care what anyone says or thinks, i love every single film that the athertons put out, just simply amazing!!! go rachel , at fort william' you can do it!!!!!! Cant wait for worldcup to start aaaaaaaaaaah.
Gee's lifting some massive shit there! Anyways, muc off whatever, everytime Rachael started a run last season I was blown away by but expecting the gap she put into the other women. She's in a class of her own with only Ragot to challenge. Hopefully Morgan Charre and Manon Carpenter will challenge this season. Not that I want Rachael to get beat but just that I love the women's racing and I'd love to see a great season from them. All the best gals
It's hard to tell because you don't know what his training plan looks like, how many sets/reps he does and maybe it's even just a warm up set but 205 pounds for a dude who weights around 185 pounds is nowhere close to being impressive, especially for an athlete of that caliber... But I can tell you from personal experience that being extremely strong doesn't give you all that much of an edge when it comes to biking so the numbers don't really matter all that much.
no I can tell you from personal experience that it does, I'm alot stronger overall than last season and it's nice to fly down steep rough sections and being stronger helps quite a bit with holding onto the bike and when you can push the bike around more it's good, yes balls, line choice and being able to respond to stuff coming your way quickly helps a lot more but you still need alot of strength IMO
If someone goes from weak to "ok strong" it's going to make a good difference. Getting your squat from 200 to 300 will not yield as much improvement than getting it from 100 to 200 though. Last season I got about 125lbs on my squat and my deadlift and to be honest I didn't notice all that much of an improvement. My personal observations and training litterature seem to suggest that depending on the sport, there usually are big diminishing returns past a certain point and I do not feel that this point is very high for DH even if DH is probably the racing discipline that benefits the most from strength. Another thing that opened my eyes on that issue is while having squat/DL/Bench/C&J/row and whatever numbers much much much higher than the general population, I was often getting past by girls about my riding level when riding XC, girls who couldn't fight their way out of a wet paperbag.
Also, where I ride DH, fatigue is a much bigger problem for me. From what I understand, you can only tap into your strength for 0-30 seconds effort and then after your body switches to different energy patterns so I don't think strength is a big player for that reason too.
I'm in no way an expert on the topic but if I was wrong, the top guys on the WC circuit would probably all squat/DL 400+ lbs but they definitely don't look like they can lift anywhere close to that.
Yeah I could have worded it better. If he lifts 205 pounds, it's probably because his trainers (who I can probably safely assume know a LOT more than us) believe that 205 is good for him. I used "extremely strong not amounting to much" with "getting your squat/DL from 200 to 600 pounds" in mind as I don't think the time/energy invested would serve a dh rider well.
Lets also realize that while that's not a 'massive' amount if weight he also doesn't look to be struggling with it to much. That looked like a pretty easy rep for him. He wasn't even using a spotter so I would assume this would be a lighter weight for him. I think it would be safe to assume he could do much more if he wanted.
Sound like you need to build bike fitness and not just gym specific strength. There's plenty of evidence that lifting causes muscle dilution so while you're good to lift 3/400+ lbs, you can't sustain any sort of reasonable pace for more than 30- 40secs. Those diminishing returns you're talking about are probably because beyond a certain point, your time is probably better spent training for fitness and not lifting heavy. Even DH is predominently aerobic, a 3minute race would be 60:40 aerobic:anaerobic so time to get out biking and stop training to fight your way out if a paper bag
Alrighty guys, enough with the gym talk about if its heavy or not, some of you think your cutler or coleman. Like the comment above lets just say hes will leave all of us on a bike
I'm not sure why I got so many neg props. I'm not super strong or just super fit. But I've definitely seen a huge difference in myself and my friends from when we were 15 ish years old and almost fat trying to race DH, till now that we all got serious in the gym. We all have gotten a lot faster. A couple of my friends will be racing world cups this year and they are in way better shape than a lot of xc guys I know.
And protour? Your skill us only half the bill for racing. If you only ride for fun then fitness is irrelevant. But Racers MUST be at the top if their game physically to climb the big boy ranks. (I'm not there yet. I'm just speaking from watching my friends do it)
@protour: if it was about pure strength, riders would be shaped more like power lifters instead of soccer players and they'd have insane totals, which they don't.
Rachel is mint, seems a proper nice girl. I doubt they'll squat too much in season as it takes a lot out of your legs. Squats and deadlifts are amazing for your body, with chinups probably all your body needs + sex coz everyone needs a squirt from time to time.
I put some Muc Off in a really old Aluminium tin and it managed to dissolve a hole through the bottom all over my floor. Wasn't best pleased. Still a good cleaning agent though.
That's why you need to dilute it, although I don't even use muc off. I get the exact same stuff made by comma for industrial use in a 20l container for £28
Rachel is mint, seems a proper nice girl. I doubt they'll squat too much in season as it takes a lot out of your legs. Squats and deadlifts are amazing for your body, with chinups probably all your body needs.
Could it be the last year of the carbon fury in 26"? Man those trails and surrounding village areas look so lovely! Those plates on the barbell look to b double wides aye...
Well CG was already riding Emeralds, he was only taking stickers off his foxs because he wouldnt be allowed the fox name when theyre not his suspension sponsor, Dan doesnt have any publicly known suspension sponsors other than fox as far as I know
damn walking billboards!!!! .. i mean .. go team and all that jazz but man these guys are really milking for all its worth .. is it me or do they seem quite boring in these films - too serious
I see why you would think they are too serious, especially considering the position you're in. I mean, you're not sponsored and therefore don't need the sponsorship money to fund your chosen sport. Therefore, you have no need to promote any products. You're also just riding for fun so you only see it as a hobby / pastime and never need to view it from the angle of sport, industry, work etc. In fact you're so far removed from the world the Athertons are involved in that I can only applaud you for being able to think of anything to say about it at all.
@dhx42....Are you trying to tell me that that Peaty, or Josh don't have sponsorship commitments? As far as team edits go, different style of team, different style of edits. Don't get me wrong, I prefer the Santa Cruz style/ethos but I don't for one minute believe that off camera, they're not taking the 2013 season as seriously as GT/Athertons.
No not all. I'm sure the Syndicate takes their training/commitments seriously. I just think the Athertons and Co take themselves too seriously. There's a big difference between taking your training seriously and yourself. You can take your training seriously and have fun at the same time. Everyone gets that racing bikes are their jobs, but show some personality and act like you enjoy it.
Let's face it, watch this video and then watch the Santa Cruz Bronson video/add. Who would you rather go on a ride with?. Which companies bike/product would you rather buy?
Gee Atherton, "you have to better bounce of trees, and better get back up". Regardless of your workout, if you hit a tree going down a mountain on a downhill bike race, you will certainly not be getting "back up" any time soon
Would like to see some more Atherton vids like 'the Atherton project' which has stopped now because i am 14 and love biking and want to get into racing and to have worlds champs less than 20mins down the road and riding the same tracks they train on its great motivation
Hey man that sucks, I remember doing a 40 foot gap and casing hard, the day before though (luckily enough) I did 4 press ups and 6 pull ups and ran to the shop and back for some milk and didnt even feel a thing. My helmet was split in 2 though.
I can't do any kind of workout without causing extreme pain to myself right now. I'm in a bad way. Lots of ice and peppermint oil has helped a ton so far. I basically body slammed some roots the size of my thigh on a bad run.
And me, I think it could be simular to a boxxers training when they want to increase strength but not gain weight. 3-5 min rest between sets apparently strengthens nervous system.
He's putting muscle on his upper body as it will hold him in place more when going through twisting motions or with his limbs being pulled about during a crash. Simple way to think of it is if he did a 200kg deadlift 1 rep max then each arm is carrying 100kg so it would take a greater force to pull his arm out of place than if he lifted 140kg which would be 70kg per arm.
If someone goes from weak to "ok strong" it's going to make a good difference. Getting your squat from 200 to 300 will not yield as much improvement than getting it from 100 to 200 though. Last season I got about 125lbs on my squat and my deadlift and to be honest I didn't notice all that much of an improvement. My personal observations and training litterature seem to suggest that depending on the sport, there usually are big diminishing returns past a certain point and I do not feel that this point is very high for DH even if DH is probably the racing discipline that benefits the most from strength. Another thing that opened my eyes on that issue is while having squat/DL/Bench/C&J/row and whatever numbers much much much higher than the general population, I was often getting past by girls about my riding level when riding XC, girls who couldn't fight their way out of a wet paperbag.
Also, where I ride DH, fatigue is a much bigger problem for me. From what I understand, you can only tap into your strength for 0-30 seconds effort and then after your body switches to different energy patterns so I don't think strength is a big player for that reason too.
I'm in no way an expert on the topic but if I was wrong, the top guys on the WC circuit would probably all squat/DL 400+ lbs but they definitely don't look like they can lift anywhere close to that.
And protour? Your skill us only half the bill for racing. If you only ride for fun then fitness is irrelevant. But Racers MUST be at the top if their game physically to climb the big boy ranks. (I'm not there yet. I'm just speaking from watching my friends do it)
Man those trails and surrounding village areas look so lovely!
Those plates on the barbell look to b double wides aye...
Let's face it, watch this video and then watch the Santa Cruz Bronson video/add. Who would you rather go on a ride with?. Which companies bike/product would you rather buy?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Diy0RNe_c