Busy times at Point1 HQ, off-season training has kicked of again for most athletes, so fine-tuning, getting back into the training mindset, managing the process and implementing past lessons and experiences learned!
Here’s a pretty simple but deadly effective exercise to add to your strength training arsenal! Borrowed from a well know strength coach called Dean Somerset. I couldn’t help but think of the myriad of benefits for the mountain biker.
It’s an All in One bang for your buck type move. Torso Anti-Flexion, Hip stability and mobility, scapular and general shoulder stability, anti lateral flexion and a unilateral hip extension emphasis so crucial for MTBers. Not to mention the overall neuro-muscular, intra and inter-muscular co-ordination.
Load it up with dumbbells or kettle-bells (bottoms up KB would be challenge). Use at the end of session as part of a core circuit or with lighter loads early in a session as an “activation”m exercise, to get all systems trucking.
Enjoy and let me know how it goes for you guys and girls!
Ahh King TUT! Sounds awful right? TUT = Time Under Tension. King, because this is the King way to add some time under tension to your strength training sessions!
RFESS
The RFESS is a Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat what some people call the Bulgarian Split Squat. One of the ultimate lower body exercises and a move that most certainly should be in your arsenal. Simply one leg behind you on a bench, chair or whatever is handy! The video will explain the rest.
The bang for buck aspect of the RFESS is nearly unmatched. Single leg extension, good glute drive is required, supreme control of the stability of the hips (glute medius, adductors, abductors) and torso/core (antiflexion, anti later-flexion), balance, proprioception (especially when loaded asymmetrically), eccentric load on the hamstrings, ankle stability and mobility are challenged and you even get a little hip flexor stretch for good measure.
It also lets you see pretty quickly if you have any strength deficits between legs.
Further more seen as you can literally go wild with different loading parameters and combos, the additional and/or specific challenges you can induce for the torso, hips, and hip extensors in terms of strength, power, stability and mobility are near endless!
It’s a pretty straight forward move to learn and is perfect for people with knee pain as it usually doesn’t cause much issues. I would recommend though that you follow a simple progression before even thinking about even body-weight RFESS’.
Normally for Point1 athletes it goes – Split Squat – Body-weight squats – reverse lunge – RFESS. Getting yourself comfortably and stability into the lowest position of the RFESS is about a good balance of mobility and stability, so those need to be well taken care of before you start!
King TUT
Ahh Time under tension. Creating and managing mechanical forces in muscle is, well in it’s essence, “strength”. Changing the speed with which you lift weight through the full or partial ranges of concentric, isometric and eccentric contractions manipulates how long the muscles have to be “working” i.e. receiving neurological info, using ATP as energy, sliding actin over myosin etc…
Increasing TUT is primarily a technique used by bodybuilders to induce hypertrophy, that means gain in size of muscle or as the kids like to say these days GAINNNNZZZZZZZ!
It’s been shown in laboratory setting though that increasing TUT to be an effective way to increase protein synthesis in the muscles (Link)! But clearly has it’s limitations for the mountain-biker as we want fast, powerful contractions the majority of the time in training!
The method in the vid below is a combo of decreasing the speed of the eccentric/lowering phase of the RFESS, pausing for 1 then bringing your self back up into a half rep (halfway to the top of the movement) then back to the bottom and finally EXPLODE to the start position.
That EXPLODE is very important as being explosive through extension of the knee and hip joint is very important for the MTBer. The other portions of the lift challenge single leg eccentric strength and also go a long way to increasing your muscular endurance through partial and loaded contractions -something that happens very often on the bike as you hop, pop, pump and push your way over a variety of terrain, especially when things get steep or have large g-outs etc…
The final piece of the puzzle is the loading! In this vid i used what is called the “goblet squat” loading, holding a heavy Dumbbell in the goblet position, is a great “self-limiting” way to load as it really challenges the anterior (front) core while safely loading the legs!
Start smart – be confident but don’t be afraid to be humbled by the RFESS and the King TUT method!
P.S. the “half rep” idea was 100% stolen from Ben Bruno!
Even though there is more than one way to corner a push-bikes, when we talk “cornering” it’s frequently the classic outside foot down image that hits peoples mind…and rightly so!
The “classic” application of foot down technique requires the ability to move the hips laterally, drive the inside bar down, eyes forward and pelvis and shoulders square! And it’s this technique that many lesser riders struggle with regardless of terrain, bike and tyre choices.
This “hips out – bike over” technique allows you to get the bikes tyres “on-edge” which is real important when we are hitting longer turns with a mixed or not so grippy surface, when we want to carry big speeds or if the turn is beyond 80 degrees or so!
Point1 Athletic Development trained Neil Stewart does a mighty job of demonstrating here!
You’ll see that inside shoulder (head of the humerus), outside knee and ankle almost always line up in any rider with good technique!
How you arrive at a point to be able to apply this technique usual needs a multi-faceted approach and may very well form a indepth blog post in the future!
Time and time again on various MTB media articles across all mediums I read lines like “so and so has the “fitness” and “strength” or “fitness and power” to win etc… Each time I read such a line I cry a little inside! The line that inspired this short post was the following;
“Rider1 had all of the power and fitness for the stage one win and the overall”.
Well what’s wrong with that I hear you ask…? It’s pretty straight forward really, the misappropriation of the word fitness. It’s become a strange old catch-all for qualities of endurance specific to each discipline and frankly as a physical preparation/coaching professional it gets my goat!
Fitness, simply, is suitability for a task, in the case of Enduro, for example, that encompasses many things, i.e. many components of fitness! Power being one of them, along with strength, aerobic capacity, anaerobic power and capacity, mobility, flexibility, stability…..it’s a long and frankly comprehensive list.
“Fitness” has many components but is not a specific single quality and as such should never be spoken about as one single un-tangible thing! Now you probably think I’m being unnecessarily pedantic but I’m anything but, my job is to increase riders “fitness” and do so I need to know what exact physical qualities/components are required to excel in their sport and discipline and in what ratios!
You see if for example Rider1in the quote above had very poor power then he would no longer have the “fitness” to win Stage One! Simple. Power is a crucial component of fitness for a mountain biker…in all disciplines. What the author has done here is confused the word “Fitness” with “Endurance” .
Endurance has many definitions but really it’s most simply defined as “the ability to resist fatigue”.Not quite the same as fitness now is it!? How do we achieve “endurance” for out sport I hear you ask? We work on the components of fitness most relevant to our discipline, building them in such a way that we can not only meet or exceed the physical demands of that discipline but also resist the fatigue that meeting those demands creates!
Maybe the above went over your head or seemed totally pointless but for me it’s a question of culture and the environment that that culture creates!
Do the small things perfectly and the big things will look after themselves. Educating riders I work with is a key part of the coaching process and even small things like using the correct terminology consistently, leads to a productive environment where we all on the same page and focused on the same goal!
Rant over.
Oh and for those interested the varied and debatable” Components of Fitness are;
Now while there are a few staple go to exercises that should form the bulk of any sound strength training program (deadlift, squats, single-leg work, push ups, pull ups, TGU’s etc…). It’s nice to have a few extra moves in the “toolbox” to keep things fun, motivating and sometimes maybe to kill a few birds with one stone.
Step in #1 in hopefully a long series of interesting moves to add to your strength and power training! The RFESS Iso Hold Med Ball Slam.
Sounds like a right handful but it’s not! Get into a rear foot elevated split squat position (a move that should be in your regular routine), Knee at 90 degrees, hips and shoulders square, pelvis neutral (no forward or backward tilt/slide) and then slam that med ball hard, reacting to the bounce, reloading and slamming again! Aim for 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps per side and be very certain you keep lead leg at 90 degrees, torso “tall”, hips and shoulders square and lead foot planted flat on the floor!
It’s a power move for the upper body, with isometric strength demands for the lower body and great hip, torso and shoulder mobility and stability demands thrown in for good measure! Slam hard and enjoy! Form is critical as always. I was only using a 3kg med-ball in the video below.
