Best way to improve my bike fitness??

renton

Hi all

im after some advice on bike fitness.

i went out last week with a bunch of lads on here and done a loop round the wyre forest of 16 miles, i was knackerd by the end but felt ok , didn't get off on the climbs and managed to keep up( sort of!!)

today i went out and we did a 20 mile loop and i was blowing big style all the way round, to the point where i was worried the others would get fed up of waiting for me.

i was last up all th climbs and started to walk a couple.

it also affected my concentration a bit as i was so tired.(hollow legs!)and i started to make some mistakes n the single track

by the end of the ride i was so tired that i got the shakes .!!!

now the only difference between the two rides was that last weeks started at 10 and this weeks at 8

admittedly i didn't sleep well last night as id been to a BBQ in the evening and had a few beers etc.

im also very overweight at 18 stone nd 6 foot tall.

what d you think is the reason i was ball bagged today t hen ??

And waht is the best way to improve my bike fitness so i don't get left behind!!

cheers

steve

weeksy59

Time and patience mate.

I've now been working hard for 6 months, and the difference is pretty huge. I can now climb hills i had to walk up quite easily.

Alcohol is a big no no before training, it will affect you in many ways, the biggest being dehydration.

FSR Si

I'm just back into riding after a few years off, Ive shed 3 stone in 6 months by using a mix of riding, upper body weights, and a treadmill. Most important thing for me was to make the riding fun, Just go and have a laugh and dont get hung up on weight loss as you'll lose motivation. Plus the more fun you have the more you'll ride then by default the weight will come off.

Good luck and stick with it.

weeksy59

FSR Si wrote:

Just go and have a laugh and dont get hung up on weight loss as you'll lose motivation. Plus the more fun you have the more you'll ride then by default the weight will come off.

Good luck and stick with it.

Agree with all the above... Losing weight with an MTB isn't hard... if you choose the terrain which makes you want to ride for a good couple of hours.

You're looking 1000+ calories per hour, so do a 2 hour blat... that's a LOT of cals burnt.

Ditch Witch

The most obvious explanation is likely to be poor hydration which results in increased body temperature, heart rate, perceived exertion, and possibly increased reliance on carbohydrate as a fuel source, thus making you bonk quicker.

Being a BBQ, you probably ate too much meat and not enough carbs.

mounty

A bit obvious I know..... but I have learnt that booze the night before a ride is bad news.....

Other than that... load up on carbs, drink plenty and keep those cranks moving !

Oh and patience.....

punctureboy

never go on any ride longer than 90 minutes without food.

renton

ha ha mounty !! it was your faulti was blowing! making me do that concrete road climb.......twice

baccodaddy

i know this is strange but in a medical research paper lager was the fastest way to replace glycogen in the system after a ride.odd i know ,dont think it meant getting shit faced though just a couple

gettricky

Just got this through from Dirt School:

Dirt School Tip
Drinking is one of the most important fuelling strategies to get right. Your body is a finely tuned piece of equipment and will respond badly to dehydration. Your capacity for hard work declines by up to 30% with only a 4% decrease in body weight loss. That means as you sweat you’re potentially losing performance unless you replace it. If you’re training hard, weigh yourself before and after. Roughly, a loss of 1kg should be met with an intake of 1.5L of fluid. Everyone’s different so try it out and see how much fluid your body uses.

Other than that you have to slog, I'm in the same boat, been 6 months and I"m still not catching up with the guys I train with, but I am getting better. I've got asthma which doesn't help.

The weird thing I find is some weeks I'll have a storming session and assume the next week will be even better, but the next week just seems to hurt the entire time.

To a degree you just have to push through it and keep going and eventually your body will catch up.

Good luck

Slow1972

renton wrote:

And waht is the best way to improve my bike fitness so i don't get left behind!!

Hi renton, ride your bike more often. Stick some midweek sessions in, even if they are shorter and higher intensity, you will still benefit. I don't think you're going to make massive gains riding once a week.

It goes without saying that if you are riding with lighter guys you also have the excess baggage to haul up the hills. In simple terms if you keep up with someone lighter than you up a hill (bike and your weight) you are having to put out more power than him. You can therefore either lose weight or gain power if you want to keep up. Training more will help you do both

Stick at it mate, the more you do the more tolerable the pain becomes!

RockyHopperShow

A few questions on Gettricky's "Dirt School Tips" :
1) 1 kilo of weight loss seems to be a lot to lose in one session of training (that's over
7000 calories isn't it?) (Unless you were super-fit of course)
2) 1.5 litres of water is what we should be drinking everyday whilst only doing moderate
activity, so wouldn't this be a dangerous under-replenishment of fluids?

This isn't a criticism of Gettricky's post, just an observation.

marinman1

i don't know if this actually works but i do light 2kg weights most nights for about 15 minutes at a time and since doing it my fitness seems to have increased massively, although that could just be the fact that i'm riding most days as well, if anyone could confirm my weights theory that would be great.

Ditch Witch

When you say you "do light weights", what do you mean, exactly?

Ditch Witch

RockyHopperShow wrote:

A few questions on Gettricky's "Dirt School Tips" :
1) 1 kilo of weight loss seems to be a lot to lose in one session of training (that's over
7000 calories isn't it?) (Unless you were super-fit of course)
2) 1.5 litres of water is what we should be drinking everyday whilst only doing moderate
activity, so wouldn't this be a dangerous under-replenishment of fluids?

This isn't a criticism of Gettricky's post, just an observation.

1) Yes, if it was all fat, but you don't burn fat that quickly. It will be sweat that is lost. The theory is that a 1kg of water weighs 1 litre, ergo you need to drink a litre of water. What this theory doesn't tell you is that we get about 80% of our water from food, so you don't need to drink that much. I never lose that kind of weight when I work out, anyway, even though I sweat loads.

2) See above. No, you should NOT need to drink 1.5 litres of water with only moderate activity. This fallacy was based on a study years ago saying that the human body uses 1.5 litres of water a day (true) and that is how much water we need daily (also true), but, like I said above, you get 80% of that in food, provided you eat a healthy diet rich in fruit and veg.

If you eat nothing but toast, then yes, you'd need more water.


The 1.5 litres quoted is meant to be taken in excess of the 1.5 litres oft quoted by the fitness media.


Google "hypnoatremia" to find out why that is a BAD idea.

RockyHopperShow

Ah, I get it now DW. Thanks for clearing this up for me. It's a minefield isn't it and the goalposts keep being moved. I am doing a moderate amount ofbiking, gymwork and swimming throughout the week and I suppose I take in about 2 litres of water plus an isotonic drink for the workout each day.

Ditch Witch

Pleasure

It is indeed a minefield. the problem with the internet is that this kind of misinformation soon becomes "fact" and it becomes almost impossible to dispell.

It's why I'm not a fan of the words "always" and "never" when it comes to health and fitness

I read an enormous amount of fitness literature and websites, etc, and I only just learned about 6 months ago that fruit (in general) is not "packed full of vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants" as the majority of fitness press would lead you to believe. In fact, fruit contains very little in the way of vits and mins and, while some are "superfoods" very few are. Apples are mostly fibre, water and sugar I took some convincing on that front, but once I started checking out the actual "ingredients" of most fruits, I was stunned. I still eat fruit, because it means I don't eat cakes, but veg is much better for you!


The thing to remember is that the human body is not a machine so what's good for you isn't necessarily going to be good for me. The golden rule is to eat to not get hungry and drink to not get thirsty. Don't force water down just because someone else says you should. But, if you need 2 litres, then drink it!

You're the only one that knows how much you should drink

jojo90

Get some SIS fuel for your waterbottle. Don't worry about the calories, you will burn off waaaay more. Also make sure you eat protein and carbs about 1h before you ride (complex carbs) so say a tuna sarnie on 3 slices of brown bread. Drink a reasonable amount throughout the day as well.

I do all that, and have energy gels and still loose weight Upping your metabolism especially with sharp bursts on a MTB means you burn more calories over the course of the day. The muscles you build up also increase your base metabolic rate.

jojo90

And just to add

Only you know how hard you are pushing it on a given day and how much water you need. Basically I know I will consume roughly 750mls of SIS drink per 1h 30mins on the bike doing a decent pace. I don't tend to need to stop of a wee very often so that must be right .

Ridg

personally i use a heart rate monitor (HRM) which sits on my handle bar, there are different ways you can use a HRM to improve your fitness / measure your improvement. the method i use it to work at the same intensity eg exercising in the same zone for my aims around 160-170bpm with this in mind i workout for the same duration and then measure the distance, as long as the distance is increasing i know that i'm getting fitter. an alternative is to do the same distance, at the same speed but with the aim to lower your average heart rate.

the other use of a HRM is to treat it like a rev counter, for example my "calculated max" heart rate is 196bpm, so if i'm going flat out and i'm only at say 180, then i know i can push harder

regarding the fruit, whilst most fruit is mainly water and sugar, the sugar is natural sugar, opposed to refined (table sugar) refined sugar is bad in that, it doesn't contain the nutrients the body requires to digest it, fruits on the other hand, contain these nutrients and thus don't leech from the body. natural sugars also have less of an affect on the blood sugar level

Ditch Witch

That's true, though I just read something to say that fructose bypasses the liver and may be more likely to be stored as fat instead of converted to glucose.

How the hell they know that, I have no idea.

I don't believe for a second that fruit makes you fat though

Ridg

Ditch Witch wrote:

That's true, though I just read something to say that fructose bypasses the liver and may be more likely to be stored as fat instead of converted to glucose.

How the hell they know that, I have no idea.

I don't believe for a second that fruit makes you fat though

as far as i know, that would only be the case, if the body was in starvation mode, or experiencing high levels of insulin

but at the end of the day, regardless of where the calories have come from, if you burn less than you consume, it will get stored as fat.