James Wilson: Hi! Everybody, this is James Wilson with mtbstrengthcoach.com. And what I wanted to talk you today about is some ideas for cardio training. I had spoken with literally hundreds of riders from around the world. One of the top things that people want is better endurance, better cardio endurance that I'm going to bike. The problem is always the way that the mount bikers are told to go about getting that endurance is pretty miming , you know the tracks that having put in a lot of aerobic base miles, you know spending 45 minutes in an hour, hour-and-a-half or more on a train or road bike just putting in and you know countless miming base miles in order to build your aerobic base and do that max and realistically, most mount bikers myself included would -- now, we think for about a thousand of the things that we would rather do and sit there, I mean reading the phone book is slightly more exciting than sitting there immensely found in our base miles.
So, what happens is a lot of riders just avoid the cardio training all together, you know that figure that's what it takes to you better, hydrologist suffer on the trail and have to do that top so or maybe rider is hit the ball, you know so our rider not need to do this and so you started doing in, you walk the base miles, you're doing everything you know right. But when it comes down, it actually get on the trail and you know put that cardio to use to find you still lacking in some key areas, you know most notably climbing, you know sprints passing up or stuff like that, most riders that do, do cardio training, you know tell me that if they still stuck your lacking in those areas.
Obviously, something is not working, I mean if the prescription for your problems still bad and you don't even want to do it or you do, do it and you'll notice your results from it and some is not right. So, in my opinion, you want the things that's really missed in a lot of mount bikers programs is the use of interval training and up into a few years back, interval training wasn't really proven by science to have much of an impact on your Vo2 max, which is a way that science measures you're ability to absorb and utilize oxygen. So, the idea was that you needed to do this aerobic base training, basically training to sustain a certain heart rate zone for 45 minutes to an hour or more, you know the efforts to build your aerobic base in your Vo2 max, and then now it's going to help give what you needed to sustain later training after as well.
Again, like I said, the problem is it doesn't work a lot of times in the real world and so what hasn't found there been in a couple of studies come out lately to have showing that you actually get significant increases in the Vo2 max from a good interval training programs in not only are you building your anaerobic capacity, which you're also building aerobic capacity as well, so you - two versus one stone. The other great thing is these studies, it's kind of that you can get these increases of Vo2 max in much less time in a traditional aerobic training fact. One, studying particular had the subjects do a 320 minute workouts, basically consisting of 30 second sprints with four minutes rest, so they're working out 60 minutes total for the whole week.
They're comparing the increases of Vo2 max to a group that did, you know an hour than an hour-and-a-half, three times a week. So, you know one group is exercising 60 minutes total, one group is exercising three to four hours each week and they actually saw the same increases in Vo2 max from same of those both groups. So, again, this ideally, you have to engage anaerobic base training in order to build your Vo2 max is simply not true. So, what I suggest if you do, part of one of the most popular method is known as this is a bottom method with same doctor the Japanese Research Scientist who kind of invented in researches technique, but what it consists of this 20 seconds of intense work with 10 seconds of rest and that's a little mini interval, you basically repeat those mini intervals six to eight times, before rest and get yourself complete, it could take you know five plus minutes for your full cover, and then doing, you know one more round of those mini intervals and so, you know again, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds rest, repeat that 60 times for recovery, you know maybe do that one more time, but that protocol that like I said, which is known as the Tabata protocol, the study that was done on it showed a huge increase in Vo2 max from this protocol, some of the largest that seen in any study, including studies done on aerobic training.
So that's probably the easiest way for you to start realizing some of the power interval training as a mount bike rider, so you know if you're kind of rider, it's a boring cardio training because you hated the thought of having and do, you'll find that this takes much less time, it's much more entertaining, much less miming to do, so you can start doing this right away and start seeing benefits from it, you know relatively soon or if you're already doing some sort of cardio program, you know maybe replacing one or two of your base mile days with some interval training; again will help say some more entire on you keep immensely fresh.
Also, really increase your anaerobic endurance, which I think is the missing key, we've got a lot of mount bikers out there that have a great aerobic fitness, you know they're able to go at a sub-max rate for a long period of time, but when they get on the trial, they try to lay down a lot of effort, climb hill or do something like that, they find, they just don't have that horse power and endurance do that, it's because you don't train that with aerobic base mile that's only trained for interval training.
So, not only getting aerobic fitness, but actually getting much more mount bike specific fitness out of interval training. Again, you know again try that's a bottom method, it's extremely popular in a lot of circles for some reason how that really caught much in mount biking circles, but one of my favorite methods is using jump rope, you know it try to make sure that you're getting good intensity in keeping it there is the kind of jumps we're able to get in, in that first 20 second interval and try to get as many as jumps as you can, and then each subsequent little many interval try to match and beat that number, so that you know that you're starting to -- as you get tired.
So, realistically getting about 50 jumps to take a few in a 20 second interval is a good pace and so again trying to maintain or beat that number each time will make sure that you're really doing, which you need to get the intensities in the key with interval. So, you know you may find that, it first takes through a lot and get using another and pace yourself and just go as far as you can for those little mini intervals that really wear yourself out in a short period of time. But again, you know full to lot of workouts going to take you 15 to 20 minutes to complete and that's if do two four rounds of the stuff and so on.
Anyways, once again, this is been James Wilson with mtbstrengthcoach.com. I hope you enjoyed this little cardio training step again. There is cardio training for the rest of us, if you don't like sitting on our road bike, you don't like sitting on train or mindlessly counting on base mile as you're not alone, you know most of us don't want to do that. And luckily, there are strategies for the rest of us out there that will actually have kicking on but on the trail and in much less training time. So, anyway, get a little bar as a short, I'm sure you'll appreciate the results.
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