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The Riding For A Lifetime Podcast

By: James Wilson - MTB Strength Training Systems
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  • Summary

  • This podcast is dedicated to bringing the 40+ year old mountain biker the best training strategies to help them ride stronger now and for year to come.
    Copyright © 2012 James Wilson. All rights reserved.
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Episodes
  • Beyond Intervals - Using Anti Glycolytic Training To Improve Performance And Health

    Beyond Intervals - Using Anti Glycolytic Training To Improve Performance And Health
    Apr 26 2024

    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

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    45 mins
  • 8 Tips To Help Low Back Pain

    8 Tips To Help Low Back Pain
    Mar 8 2024
    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 holding for. Improve Hip Mobility. Yes, you most likely do need to improve your hip mobility, you just need to focus on more than just the front of the leg (Quads and Hip Flexors). Your hips have 4 basic directions of movement and you want to do something to work on all of them. I like to use good old fashioned static stretching positions along with my breathing and a little bit of movement to help me get deeper into the stretch. The 4 stretches I like to do are the Quad/ Hip Flexor Stretch, Hamstring Stretch, Glute Stretch and Butterfly Stretch. You want to hold the stretches for as long as you can - 15 seconds is better than nothing and holding them for 5+ minutes might do you some good. In general, though, I recommend 30 seconds up to 2 minutes, 3-7 days a week. Improve Spinal Mobility. Another forgotten part of the low back pain problem is that your spine needs to be able to move freely and sometimes sticking points in that movement create excessive stress on the spine. Having a ...
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    42 mins
  • Strength Training Basics For The 40+ Year Old Rider

    Strength Training Basics For The 40+ Year Old Rider
    Feb 16 2024
    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 those movement patterns.This means you can do a total body training split (where you train the lower and upper body on the same day) or an upper body/ lower body split where you focus on one area of the body each day.Total body training is usually better for minimizing soreness and maximizing recovery while the upper/ lower training split is better for creating more stress in one area, which can deliver better results with proper recovery or can help riders who recover really well and need more volume to stimulate progress.I suggest starting with a total body training split and then trying the upper/ lower training split if you feel you aren’t getting fatigued from your workouts. Don’t Overdo Circuit Training You don’t want to turn everything into Circuit Training, where you do 3-4+ exercises in a row before repeating the Circuit for the specified reps.Circuit Training is great for getting a lot of work done in a short period of time but not great for building strength and power.You also ...
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    1 hr and 3 mins
Sports & Outdoors
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