Podcast: Off Season Workouts From Adam Brayton's Coach
Words Chris Hall: Photo Peter Ostrowski
This week, Jonny Thompson from Fit4Racing joins us on the show. Jonny coaches World Cup DH racer Adam Brayton, and in this episode he's going to give some example workouts to help you make the most of your offseason. We talk about the minimum time needed to really make some gains. Why and how gym time can be really beneficial and efficient, and the need to develop multiple 'energy systems'. So if you want to get the most out of your time over the winter, then give this episode a listen to find out how.
You can also listen by searching for ‘Downtime Podcast’ on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts, by asking Alexa, or over on our website http://www.downtimepodcast.com/fit4racingnovember18/ and you can follow us on Instagram @downtimepodcast
Author Info:
Must Read This Week
How to Watch the 2024 Mountain Bike World Cup [Update: Staylive Offering Access in New Zealand, South Africa & More]
60402 views
60402 views
Sign Up for the Pinkbike Newsletter - All the Biggest, Most Interesting Stories in your Inbox
PB Newsletter Signup
I know it is kind of the opposite of what is considered cool....but it is pretty amazing.
Saves your health, time, money....
I'd say check it out.
"I just ride to have fun, bro" he said raggedly, as he struggled to catch his breath after a 40 second climb on a recreational trail.
I have been doing this for a few years by myself. I just miss the heavy squats and deadlifts due to injury and other sports. I replace them with single leg step up's every morning, walking and badminton (great for lunges).
My pumptrack routine is the following: 15min warm-up, 20-30 laps that last 30 seconds, between which I rest a minute, and I finish with calming down and stretching for 10min.
Good luck, let me know how you get on.
Try to balance muscles development by working a bit more on the muscle groups less developed during the season.
Pull-up bar
A squat rack
An olympic barbell
A set of rings
Some dumbbells and kettlebells
Plyo box
Concept 2 rowing machine or Assault bike (airbike)
Any additional equipment such as:
Farmer carry handles
D-Balls
Yoke
Skierg
These are desirable.
Currently crossfitting 5 days a week, mixing in rock climbing sessions 3 times a week. And when I’m back from injury will be riding up to 4 times a week.
Is this over training or does it sound good as long as it is enjoyable, right now I’m loving the CrossFit and climbing.
Even for punters like myself, having the fitness from road miles is why my buddies are smoked after 3 enduro stages and I am still (relatively) fresh,
Yea Richie rude rides a road bike. He also DLs/ Squats/benches 2.5x/2x/1.5x 1RM or more. His numbers on powerlifts will be impressive as well. Jared Graves was doing split suats with 100kg bar on his back and had a bloody nerve to say that gym is cherry on the pie. At 178cm he weighs 80kg. During BMX/4X he was 90kg lean. Back to 80kg, Do you have a slightest clue how much lean muscle that is at 178cm?
There are clips of Sagan in the gym and he has better mobility than Bike James, which is kinda funny, but I digress.
Power to weight, FTP, etc. are just as important as how many reps you can do in the gym at whatever weight...lifting a hunk of metal is not turning a crank on a bike. Those gains have to be translated into performance on the bike, for the duration of the event.
Squats and all other lifts are good for overall health of muscle, corestrenght etc . But there is zero proof that improving your one max rep on for instance a squat, increases your power on the bike. Look at the weight Nino Schurter squats. It's not much, even for a pro athlete. Why not: because it doens't matter that much.
Having too much muscle mass, does negatively influence your power to weight ratio.
The first months of powertraining are mainly neural adaptations. In my opion, that's the fase every MTB'er should complete. It will transform you for the rest of your life and you'll be stronger than most. And, you will not be silly lookin' bodybuilder-type.
Power, Speed and endurance work are important and feature heavily in our programmes at the right time. Our point is that a good strength base in the early stages will help with power, speed and endurance as we come to those elements of the periodised programme.
The squat is a great builder of core as well as leg strength. If you add it to your training correctly you will get great increases in your bike performance.
BTW, where's the deadlift
Long and low is great for, base endurance, SPO2, recovery etc. etc. standard weight training is good for some base power, compound movement and short to no recovery is great for Dh and Enduro.
Basically, you have to have a good lactate threshold and good power (strength is not power).
I tried time under tension (body pump) and found it was not that great for Dh, straight squats were not good for me either, my times got slower, compound movement (just like on a bike) were and are far more beneficial, the bonus with compound HIT sessions is you don't need 1hour in a day to do them or 2 minute rests (I have not found a Dh track where you do a few reps then a 2 min rest yet....) You need some small, short windows every day and burst yourself.
Long low intensity will work like turbo charger on an engine. Lifting as volume. Together they deliver power. Non aspirated V16 won't do much in rally but there is only this much you can do with 1.4 Fiesta, no matter how big turbos you mount on it. And please let's not forget that nothing upgrades miles per gallon better than skills. Skills are the lubricant. Good rider pedals less. That is why that 18yr old woose kills your times. You keep hoping he will get tired. He will. But you will get tired first pedalling out your mistakes.
You build a large aerobic engine with the accumulation of low intensity work, and the "turbo" addition is the intervals or HIIT you build upon it.
For me, the lifting is as much to do with the upper body, and fighting fatigue in the shoulders and arms from riding technical trails. I think pump track sessions and the rowing machine (which seems to be in the background of every mtb gym video) would help.
Mark Twight has some good opinions on this (and other objective/subjective aspects of the "training" lifestyle), as it relates to alpinism and other endurance sports.
Answering your comments:
>> Question
@betsie: you work on your strength first. Then on power. Then just on spinning pedals and sending it. Then you have three fk all months and start over again. Periodization. But if you just work on biking all the time, sorry... or lifting and riding lots - you need a bucket of testosterone for that and at our age we just don't have it. You can't keep bumping up your lifts all year round either. You can't bump up your lifts without bulking up either. You don't want to bulk up in your primary riding season. You want loose weight. Your primary riding season will lower your lifts. It has to.
Answer >>
You want to hold your effort, bulking up comes from Protein and Macro's first. Try and bulk without the right amount of Protein for muscle repair and carbs for the bulk phase! Being strong (strength) compared to power (that single rep). You may have seen the article where they showed the single rev output power from Gee and compared it to a TDF sprinter for their effort. The criteria is different as the requirement from the athlete is different, this is why Gee (and Rachel) came out with more power than a top TDF sprinter. Gee is known for his power off the line and his single stroke power out of a corner. Technique (muscle memory from the gym) and power (compound lifts and dead lifts) is what gives Gee this power. The cardio is required for his SPO2Max which allows recovery between these single reps..... I could go on but that is a book already.
>> Statement
Long low intensity will work like turbo charger on an engine. Lifting as volume. Together they deliver power. Non aspirated V16 won't do much in rally but there is only this much you can do with 1.4 Fiesta, no matter how big turbos you mount on it. And please let's not forget that nothing upgrades miles per gallon better than skills. Skills are the lubricant. Good rider pedals less. That is why that 18yr old woose kills your times. You keep hoping he will get tired. He will. But you will get tired first pedalling out your mistakes
>> Answer:
Last time I looked were were not an engine doing 1 very prescribed job in 1 direction, we are a complicated multidirectional machine that has to react to external forces. Strength and power are 2 totally different things, look at a "power" lifter and look at the top crossfit athletes for instance as a basic example.
You cannot compare a human on a bike resisting forces in multiple directions as well as creating an output (pumping the bike and pedaling when required) to a car engine (producing a single effort for a single output).
Road bike and lifting heavy stay in opposition to each other. Doing heavy threes and riding for 3 hours is a dumbest thing one can do. Unless there is some wicked Biathlon kind of sport where you ride road for half of an hour and stop to lift 200kg then repeat it 5 times. Plyo and resistance go together. Plyo and volume go together. Resistance and volume don’t.
I uphold the statement. Hitting a road bike is the least productive form of training an amateur can do. Only Yoga can challenge it. Even body building will do you better. If you like it, fine. Just don’t treat it as effective form of training when you (speaking of average person with office job and kids) have no more than 6h per week for exercise. If you desicate 3h to road and 3 to riding in the woods, you are getting nowhere. If you however hit the gym to lift and then slowly progress to more and more crossfit you will see good results.
Yoga and road bike.... mmm you obviously don't know how the pro's train and what makes a big difference to them.
We can agree that bodybuilding and powerlifting is creating empty vessels for MTB
6 hours a week to train is a fair amount of training, I was on 20 mins per day and then my normal badminton and walking this year for Champs and it worked.
So you don't see difference between muscle structure of a Body builder and a powerlifer? A pound of BB muscle can't lift what a pound of PL can. The sole purpose of weight lifting then power lifting then slowly transferring more and more into plyo crossfit, deloading and increasing reps is to use the base strength to bump up the plyo to bump up the sprints. This is how you build a strong pedal stroke. As you transfer from 3 slow sets of 5, with 5 min rests in December to 5 sets of 20 at decent bar speed, with short rests, followed by 2 crossift circuits in May, you lose both fat and muscle. What you are left with is excellent power to weight ratio with high peak power and average volume endurance. Your lifting numbers before you transition matter. If you lift 180kg in February and it withers away through plyo and riding to 150, you are left with slow 150 quite explosive 120. if you haven't done any lifting in the winter you are at slow 120 and explosive 90-100. And lean dense mucle mass difference is minimal. Yes explosive 100 is more efficient than 120. You will be able to ride longer at low intensity. But you won't be able to hold on to the bike on a DH run as long. Except... we don't ride long at least it is not where we measure our performance. Otherwise we would be into Bike
Marathon isn't it?
For the record, the mistake I made last year I was doing strength too long. I had too little acceleration. But low cadence power was fkng impressive. Useless but impressive.
The Dh pro's train deadlift and squats for sure. No doubting that one.
Coming back to riding coach, if you can skip half of the rocks/roots by chosing lines in a smart way, launching from preceding ones, you got less hits into your body and you went faster. But bunnyhops and pops are taxing your system a lot. Quite simply, upper body endurance is what it takes. Adam Brayton got his upper muscular bulk by lifting sht. And this bulk allows him to go fast through anything so that mountain trembles... he should have a nickname: "Earthquake" because that's what it feels like standing by the side of the track when he rides by.
Riding light isnt for everyone, its about timing and not all bunyops as you put it. Yes it will tax your muscle CV but that's why you train with smaller and smaller rests. Hit the muscles hard in the right direction. the faster you go the harder it is to get your timing right, now this isnt about the gym but more coordination. The gym helps massively though.
I will also train for smaller rests, just not now. I will take my squat to 130kg x 5reps with 5 minute rests. Then through 2 months I will work both with bar speed and with shorter rests. When I achieve 5 sets of 5 at 2 min rests and high bar speed I will decrease load to 110 and do 10 reps with 2 min rests. Then 90 with 20 reps. Then around May I will be doing only single leg lunges with like 70kgs. Like Graves in his vid. Difference being he did 100kgs and that's a Massive difference. You have to take it up to have something to chip away from. By this time I won't be able to do the 130 at 5 reps anymore. It will be 110 at best. By the end of September, after 4 months of pretty much only riding, I'll be down to no more than 95 x 5. Riding season will ruin my resistance. Do you get the concept of periodization now?
You are a nameless person then? Do you race or just type?
You achieve by your results, not by claims of dropping your mate or lifting x,y,z.
Results give credibility to any claims.
Are you Sam Hill and nobody knows yet?
The video if Kyle Beatie on the home page today is my local that I built as a training track nearly 10 years ago.
I don't ride anything like as much as I should but somehow have pulled off Scottish vets dh champion the last 3 years. Mostly gym training rather than riding to get there.
He states at the start normal weightlifting routines aren't very useful for mtbers.....
Now for reals: fantatic podcast, one of the best, if not the best one about conditioning that I have ever heard.
Now Motorcross riders... aren't they training to hold on to a very heavy two wheeler? To withstand insane eccentric loads?
Can someone please explain me why most mountain bikers "train" with aim to get least tired on fireroad climbs? Also, can someone show me an average powerlifter that has smaller range of movement than your Yoga teacher?
P=Fv or P=E/t - no matter what roadie section of Bike Radar, Men's health or Personal Trainer on your gym says.
I was thinking of Gwin. On his trainings on instagram he never looks like the "look how i'm fit and strong". Neither Minnaar.
Try and see it that if this is your competition who are following these roadie programs, then maybe it's to your advantage. Just remember everyone isn't in it to be some powerlifting BMXer and also the old mantra, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Adam Brayton even said in another great podcast he makes up in physical ability for what he lacks in bike skills. For every Adam Brayton is a Josh Bryceland. Yin an Yang.
So if you want to work out to support your gravity riding, to get more out of each ride, rider faster and fly further, there is no better bang for the buck than periodized strength training.
Anythign else can be your insterest. Like I have with caliesthenics. But we have to beclear when advising other people that it is not about "performance".
What I missed in the podcast was how hard it is to build a good form for weight lifting. that is takes plenty of time under or over the bar to do things right. Also to make the numbers on the plates to go up. It is a fundamental classic work that needs to be done and will take you a few years to dial. One can start by reading Starting strength or watching Starting Strength or Barbell medicine videos on youtube. If you can't do it at lest half right, there is no point in going into "crossfit" part later in the season since there is nothing dumber than injuring yourself while working out for your primary sport. Which... we all do at some point.
It takes years. That is what is best in it.
'It takes years'
I dissagree. Is form important: hell yeah, it is the 1st priority. But if you keep your ego in check (light weights in beginning) and you have a 'normal' ROM, than most lifts are not that difficult IF they are taught right. (not talking olympic lifting) .
And not all weight training should lead to ever increasing numbers, unless you want to compete in powertraining.
What I want to say is that weightlifting can be accessible to everyone, and certainly in the beginning, the benefits of doing it are immense.
Do fhiiiiiives.