Comment by exabrial
3 years ago
For me that’s mountain biking. But I look like a Greek statue on the bottom and a bit of a melting ice cream cone on top.
3 years ago
For me that’s mountain biking. But I look like a Greek statue on the bottom and a bit of a melting ice cream cone on top.
I have a tip for that, get a road bike to build fitness for the mtb.
Also, on a road bike you'll also go at much faster speeds, which I have found to translate to better confidence bombing down trails on my mtb.
I did actually! I bought a gravel bike and [trained for, competed in] 104mi Unbound this year. It has definitely had a positive effect on my mountain biking ability; I can climb faster/longer and my heart rate settles faster.
What's more hilarious is the reverse cross training of mtb->gravel. The Unbound course is notoriously unmanaged "gravel" (pile of sharp rocks) for certain sections. Most roadies are squeamish to hit rough terrain at speed, and the ability/ confidence to pass _a lot_ of riders helped me move up quickly in the front half of the race. Even the ability to cross wet/rocky water crossings without dismounting added up quickly in both energy spent and time.
:D thanks for the illustrative insight. I don't have much experience with that one, but can recommend rock climbing, which I've been doing for most of my life, it exercises pretty much everything. As something that demands good power to weight ratio you tend to drop the useless stuff.
Don't get me wrong, climbing can help you build muscle that's very aesthetic - arms, core, shoulders - but the "useless stuff" that people drop is what's useless for climbing, not other sports.
The conventional training wisdom (I learned about it from the Anderson Bros in RCTM, but others advocate it too) is to avoid carrying too much weight on your glutes/quads etc. I.e. skip leg day. So that's probably in conflict with also trying to maximize MTB performance.
I was referring to fat, and when it comes to power to weight ratio it's utterly useless. However it's true there is a bias towards upper body in climbing, but probably not as much of a bias that some other sports put on the body like cycling or running. You don't really grow big muscles, relatively speaking, climbing makes you lean and works out your entire body, after a certain point larger muscles actually become a burden... though strong feet and calf muscles are vital to be able to stick around on tiny feet holds and execute high tension manoeuvrers.
I would agree that doing a lot of cycling/mtb would probably have a slight negative affect on your climbing ability, i'm not sure about the reverse though - what most people don't realise is that climbing is a very technical sport, and you are totally using your legs most of the time, in fact one of the most obvious identifying behaviours in novices is people hauling themselves up walls using their arms and getting tired really quickly - it's not constant cut loose campusing, those are only the most extreme moves, the crux of a hard climb or a boulder problem.