Learn Mountain Biking Basics

Series Summary

Mountain biking is not only a fun hobby but it can also be a great cardiovascular workout. Biking through rough terrain and shrubbery on driven trails is a test of stamina and requires conscious awareness of one's surroundings at all times. The modern sport of biking primarily originated in the 1970's and has gotten more and more popular since then. Today it is more popular than ever. With the health boom of the late 90's cycling has gained massive momentum as a legitimate sport.

In this free video series, watch as mountain biking professional Aaron Phillips teaches mountain biking for beginners. Learn what gear to get, what to wear in bad weather, what tools to bring, how to shift and turn a mountain bike, how to brake on a mountain bike, how to change a flat tire on a mountain bike, how to accelerate on a mountain bike, how to bike down hill, and how to accelerate on a mountain bike. Mountain biking is a great form of exercise and fun at all different skill levels. Let the experts at ExpertVillage help you get started mountain biking today!

Video Transcript

"Hey, this is Aaron Phillips with Expert Village. Let's talk about beginning mountain bikers and what you want to expect with this sport. To put it simply I'd say expect it to be hard. I've been mountain biking for seventeen years now and it kinda like Greg LeMans said about road cycling "It never gets any easier you just go faster". So, it's always going to be hard it's always going to be a challenge, but it's always going to be worth it. A lot of people get on their mountain bikes and they jump into a ride that's just too long and too big. They might go along with experienced friends that are pushing them too hard, they might crash. Crashing by the way happens, if your not crashing you're really not learning. But, the uphills are always going to be difficult. What mountain biking does physiologically, it requires you to take in a tremendous amount of oxygen and use that oxygen immensely, immediately rather, to feed it to your working muscles. And most bodies, all bodies in fact, really can't keep up with that. You're laboring up that hill, you're feeling like you're going to die, just know that's lactic acid talking to you, it's just gonna mess with you. Mountain biking invokes what's called the anaerobic system and what happens is, you body simply cannot take in oxygen and use it fast enough for you to deliver oxygen to your working muscles and so they're pretty much starving for oxygen that's why they're asking you to stop and the way they ask you to stop is they just burn. But, that's just part of it, you get better and better at that, what happens is the body gets better at getting lactic acid out of the muscles quicker, and quicker, and quicker. But, after that first day of mountain biking, another thing to expect is that you're butt is going to be sore. Make sure you buy the right equipment. A bicycling short like this, for example, made by the company "Fox" has an inner liner that features a pad right where it needs to be and those padded shorts are going to help kind of emelurate the problems you might have with your bum after a first day in the saddle. Trust me, you do get used to that, there are these little bones that you're sitting on, we call them just "sit bones" and those babies really flare up on the first couple of rides. But, you get kinda calloused up in there, you get some tissue built up that just will make that next experience in the saddle more and more comfortable as you get more and more fit. "