Video: Understand the Difficulty Level of Mountain Biking

This Season: Tailgating; New Year, New You; Tax Time

Learn how difficult mountain biking is and how to establish what level of rider you are in this free video series on mountain biking.

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Boy Apr 24, 2011
I learn a lots, my strenght is improving more & more.

Video Transcript

And as I have been saying, mountain biking is all that exertion. You probably notice me kind of trying to catch my breath right now. I have talked about how mountain biking was anaerobe activity so that your muscles are overwhelmed by their inability to get enough oxygen into them which produces lactic acid, something like that, that is the basic physiology. I am no physiologist but that is pretty much how it goes. What I am saying is it is hard. There are some techniques that you can use to master going uphill. First, in the mind. Focus your mind and your body follows. As long as you are hydrated to the extent you can be, you have got enough food in you and calories to go the distance, there is little reason you can't ride up all obsticles that are within your ability and you always want to try push your ability a little further each time you ride. Uphills, it is about shifting it in that low gear early on, making sure that your chain is in the lower gears or the bigger sprockets in the back and the lower gears or the smaller sprockets in the front. That will be one in the front on the gear indicator and between one and about four in the rear on the rear indicator. Once you are going up a hill, you have got those legs spinning really nice it helps a lot, you want to keep your butt in the saddle it keeps your back wheel planted in the dirt so you have what we call purchase or you have got traction basically and when the hill gets steep like I am about to show you, you start sliding forward on the bike, your butt starts to move forward on the saddle that helps you just kind of get the right angle of attack so that you are getting just the right traction on that hill. Without talking anymore I am going to let you go ahead and demonstrate how that works and we will go up this hill right here. You clip in, we just keep rolling, it gets steep and you kind of slide forward in the saddle, you might shift down a little bit, make it a little bit easier, keep that pedal and you are leaning forward, you are pulling on the handlebar and you are making it up that big hill that you didn't think you could do and it is good times all around.

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Understand the Difficulty Level of Mountain Biking

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