Video: 4 Tips for Faster Climbing with The Strength Factory

 ahhhh, the good old days of amphetamine and cocaine to help the roadies. Crazy times!

 @MTB-Strength-Factory: A friend of mine (he is my farrier) is a former race jockey. His stories of cocaine and lots of women are hilarious.

Even funnier when his multiple ex wives and current GF back up his stories.

 I have the legs of a horse and the body of a bookie

 Cheers mate, glad I can help.

 Thanks mate, glad you found it handy.

 @MTB-Strength-Factory: Actually I think there was another tip missing which will never fly with PB... and that is to learn to enjoy the climbs That is a good start to improving climbing

 40lb is an easy drop in one season of dedicated riding. Drop the 8k on a bike and then ride the shit out of it.

 After being off the bike for nearly 9 months due to work, I recently spent close to $10k on an SB130 dream build. A few weeks ago I got completely destroyed on a climb by some skinny kid on an old Norco that probably cost under $3k three years ago. So yeah, throw all the money you want at your bike; it's not going to make up for fitness.

 Just slow down.
It doesnt matter what cadence you're doing if you're adjusting your gearing to hit some percieved pace (conciously or not)
Go out and try and climb to the top of the hill as slowly as possible. That should keep you in Z1-2 (hopefully).

But remember, HR zones (which are what I'm assuming you're using) are useless unless you know your MHR from actually finding it, not just doing 220 - age.

 @mmarkey21 yes, back it off a bit and also try doing more of a warm up before taking on the first climb. This can help keep the HR down.
Also, whilst I am 100% MTB for life, getting a few tarmac/gravel rides in Zone 2 will really help as well.

 I feel you. 20% grade first 5min then straight up singletrack. Vomit is always close.

Hard to picture if you've got fire roads or logging roads locally, but some places in the world it's full gas only.

 @MTB-Strength-Factory: Thanks, I’ll try to make a little more concerted effort to slow things down. Any experience with the optic HR monitor on a gps watch vs chest strap? I know when running it seems accurate enough but I’m wondering if it has more variability while mtbing and thus less accuracy.

 @mmarkey21: I trust the chest strap much more than the optical measurements. The data just makes much more sense to me. It is just that optic is more convenient if you want to have a more holistic view of your daily activity. After all, Z2 stuff is already being ticked off when commuting to and from work (when not working from home, that is...) so it is nice to register that. But yeah, I think it can be off quite a bit. Sometimes I feel like I'm stomping quite hard and it thinks I'm in Z1 and some other time it thinks I'm deep in Z5 even though it doesn't feel quite like that. I first started using the Mio Link (which only does the measurements and then sends them over ANT+ and Bluetooth to your HRM, Suunto Ambit 2 in my case). It wasn't even that bad, I think. Later I got a Garmin Vivofit (or something like that) which does the same as the Mio Link does, but also has its own display. So for comparison I once had the Garmin show the wrist measurement and the Suunto show the chest strap measurement. They were waaaay off. The reading on the Suunto (with the chest strap) made more sense though. I now have a Suunto Spartan HR so that I no longer have to use a separate wrist sensor. I still think the measurements are off, but I haven't done a comparison of chest vs wrist. I've got to say my skin is dark and I can imagine it may work better on light skin. My girlfriend has light skin and still uses the Mio Link and she does think it works as it should. Now I'm no medic but I think in the hospitals they still use optical equipment to measure blood flow so yeah, it should be possible to make it work half decent. But it should probably shield the ambient light, which only the Mio Link did decently. So if you've already got an HRM which accepts ANT+ or Bluetooth, just getting a Mio Link may be both the cheapest and best step into optical heart rate measurements.

 That’s what old school, XC racer Tinker Juarez would do. He’d fill up a backpack with rocks and hit the trails in the San Gabriel Mountains outside of Los Angeles and ride.

 @vondur: Tinker is still awesome. A true gentleman too. Everybody can learn a valuable lesson from Mr. Juarez.

 @Geochemistry , yes mate, love this. Military style!
The only thing is I worry about my gooch on the saddle with a heavy pack.

 Always love this kind of advice. Fill a trailer with rocks etc. Or.... you could just push a harder gear Power is power

 @vondur: and he's STILL crushing 100-mile singletrack races!!

 35 years of racing and training, and this is exactly how I still do it. For XC purposes, I train on my enduro full suspension (Intense Carbine 29) with a very heavy backpack and race on a featherweight hardtail with only one water bottle. My buddies only train and race on their superlight XC bikes... then they wonder why I always top them in the races. Maybe not the ticket for everyone, but it works for me.

 @liv2mountainbike2: That's pretty close to what I do. BIG days on my 40 pound, coil sprung E29, then climb on my HT on race day and feel like a hero.

Of course, with the guys I race against, it doesn't make me better than them. But, still a fun way to train. Also the benefit of sending it even bigger on the DH.

 That sounds like work, I thought biking was supposed to be fun?

I’m fortunate apparently, because I like to climb, the more technical the better.

If I wanted to climb better, I suppose a road bike would be in order, but those days are behind me; fortunately.

I do think it’s sad that folks aren’t fit enough to climb, but that’s their problem m

 thanks mate

 There's that old cyclists' saying, "The big hill near your house never gets easier, you just go up it faster." Or words to that effect.

 @MTB-Strength-Factory: same with racing, especially XC. It's always gonna be painful you'll just be going faster and might happen to be riding with the lead group hahaha

 Sure. But bike weight varies an order of magnitude less than body weight.

 I'm sure there's studies on this, this is just speculation, but I wonder: What about all that movement of the bike that the body doesn't do, like the wheels spinning around? Is losing a couple pounds off your waist more important than two pounds of rotational weight, unsprung weight, etc?

 @SunsPSD you are right that the whole system weight does matter, it is just that most riders can drop 2 kg of bodyfat and be healthy and powerful for basically no cost. Try dropping 2kg off most bikes and it will cost a couple of thousand $ and then might not stand up to gnarly DH tracks. Most on-bike weight savings are grams, not KG's.

 There is a good GCN video on climbing times of weight on wheels/ weight on bike/ weight on body

 @BeardlessMarinRider: "How much does body weight affect climbing speed. GCN does science"
youtu.be/iW47gb01FeA

 @BeardlessMarinRider: All I'm seeing is the timed climb with and without backpack?

 Sure, bike weight matters... When you are 140 pounds and very lean like I am. It starts getting hard to drop weight when you already have a 6 pack, and you don't drink beer or soda. But when you are the average American, you are 50 POUNDS heavier than I am. You are more than the weight of my complete bike heavier than me! Dropping 5 pounds off your bike doesn't matter much when you can drop 20 pounds from just...riding your bike.

 @DirkMcClerkin: It's always easy to second guess Bro-Science but aero does play a significant role, particularly at road bike speeds.
GCN, for the control, really should have filled their empty packs with balloons or foam peanuts to remove aero as a partial cause of the speed difference.

 @JSTootell: You aren't the only one running near their lower/ ideal weight. I'm about as skinny as I can be and my wife still sleeps with me.
I suspect 2# of rotating weight is worth 8# stationary weight all day long. There are indeed some real gains to be had with careful choosing of components. Of course the standard that they do well at the job at hand, is a minimum requirement.

 @SunsPSD: You just agreed with what I said. Bike weight matters....when you are already fit.

 @TW80 cheers bro

 Sounds like a hydration issue more than anything. Hydrate well before a ride, not just before, but throughout the morning, and hydrate well after. Headaches usually are a result of poor hydration.

 You gain what you train. If you ADD a lot of Z2, but maintain the same sprint efforts, your sprints will remain the same. But you'll gain more Z2. You only LOSE that explosive power if you don't use it.

 Thanks

 Fair enough. Our parks are just starting to open again. Can't wait!

 Skip the lift line and pedal up to the top...

 Ha! Last video I mentioned this and got crap for being critical. Cool that he understands the value of actual constructive criticism, talent that’s super rare these days.

 @Chuckolicious: always learning! haha. I might crank the next video up to 11 just to mess with you though.......

 @MTB-Strength-Factory: :-D

 5. Eat bag of delicious chips -Uncle Ray

 eBikes don't have the range for me. I don't want to ride such an overweight pig, with terrible range.