[Closed] Road biking for MTB fitness?

Yes.

In a word yes. You can control the intensity of a ride much better on the road.

Definitely. I've not been on the road for ages and my fitness has gone

When I was riding more on the road I was a lot better on the mtb

Essential

I think is pretty essential for mountain bike fitness. Mountain biking is pretty much always too easy or too hard (heart zones) you're either cruising along at resting heart rate, or you're red lining on a bitch of climb, neither of which is great for your aerobic fitness.

The head of our cycle club, who road bikes a lot, came out on the mtb the other night and was gasping at the pace.

Personally I don't think all this stuff about road fitness stacks up, if you ride a mtb cross country with the type of prolonged intensity that you might on the road, then you are going to be fitter on the mtb.

It's no substitute for skills, but a huge dose of fitness will see you pass people uphill with relative ease. If you are me, they'll catch you as you [s]mince [/s] cautiously descend the steep bits and fall off on the berms, but I know, come the next climb, they are mine! 😈

Hard intervals with recovery pretty much sums up every mtb race I've ever done. Technically more challenging than road racing, but nowhere near as hard, physically.

I road ride.....on my mtb,I generally go from trail to trail with a few toad transitions except I hammer the transitions hard,I'm currently building up my arms at the moment and I've noticed a big difference in my biking as my arms don't get tired as easy as they did which lets me concentrate on spinning the pedals faster.
Iff your muscles are strong your aerobic fitness won't suffer as much,that's what I've noticed but everyone's different,road biking can't hurt.

Essential?

All cycling will help with the general fitness (assuming you are putting some effort in to things) though obviously road biking isn't going to help with the technical side of things.

I'll do 100km+ road rides as a matter of course with the longer evenings a 60Km road ride is doable plus I'll do regular long XC rides of 100Km or more. On a trail centre weekend a couple of weeks ago the others were starting to get tired after a couple of loops - I'd only just warmed up! They did leave me for dead though as I minced down the descents. 😳

If you are serious about being fast on your MTB then road training is essential.

Technical skills help if you don't want to look like a fanny on your MTB 😛

I'm with TurnerGuy.

If you train long hard efforts on MTB you can get exceptional fitness. Mix up the bumpy sprinty stuff with long sessions, then no problem. Your heart doesn't know the difference between bikes.

However it requires more imagination with route choice. I don't own a road bike, and try not to touch a road but we are blessed with 50+ mile loops of train line paths for long if slightly dull efforts.

I've just set myself 1000mile challenge for this month, and granted it's worn me down a bit but way more intresting and challenging than road miles.

The key with MTB fitness is to try and sharpen all your skills. Have a KOM month, then a long distance month, then maybe hills another. But training long off road to an average is a good work out . Fire roads are unfairly maligned.

I should've learnt years ago the 1 hour intermittent blast with friends doesn't do a whole lot, which sadly I spent too much time doing, but it's fun!

Thanks for the replies. Time to train I think!

Fire road sprints and transitions, are they longish drags of a few minutes duration? That'll mostly be threshold stuff and is the sort of stuff that's probably easier to train riding on roads (unless you have loads of handy fire roads to train on.)

Where road really helps is just getting a lot of steady miles into the legs when not racing. If I was racing mtb I'd do a lot of road to build a decent base then move on to mtb to train in a style that's more like race efforts.

If it gives you more riding time due to convenience then it's a no-brainer, eh? And you'll probably come to appreciate it in its own right anyway.

Of course there are people who only ride MTB who can tear my legs off still, but not nearly as many of them as a few years ago.

The fireroads and transitions will get much easier, but once you've made the easy fitness gains I think it's a good idea to focus on training for the riding you want to do. If that's enduro, don't neglect the hard 4-6 minute intervals.

I spent most of the winter grinding up lots of hills on my road bike, then at the first enduro of the year I found I'd lost a bit of my previous top-end ability as a result.

But I was killing it on the transitions.

:S

Agreed it helps, even running helps general fitness which comes in handy when riding any type of bike.

chakaping - Member

If it gives you more riding time due to convenience then it's a no-brainer, eh? And you'll probably come to appreciate it in its own right anyway.

This is it for me.
My road bike lets me get out and get miles in much more easily & conveniently than the mountain bike - probably because I live in a rubbish area for mountain biking, so generally drive to places for some off road stuff.

The problem I have found with road riding is that although it improved my fitness in terms of how long I can ride for, it has reduced my ability when it comes to brief moments of hard effort. My body has got used to steady pace for long time and not the more stop-start nature of effort with mountain biking. Of course you can train for that on the road, but it requires a specific training session to work on that aspect, whereas you generally end up doing that anyway when riding off road.

for those who lose the "sprint" or "top end" ability ... try intervals
whilst out road riding. riding at threshold ... o u c h ... 🙂

now i have endurance from regular 100km+ rides plus power from
intervals and hill reps - still get my ass handed to me going down
rough stuff as i mince with the best ... skills course next then 😉

I want all my posts formatted like therevokid's - how do I do that?

Best bit about road rides for me is that you actually pedal all the time. There's a lot of standing at gates, coasting or pumping on hills and singletrack etc and, as above, it seems to be either red zone pedalling or spinning along.

I road ride a lot nowadays. When I take the mtb out, my climbing speed has increased dramatically, and average speed on the whole ride is up. Much stronger with much better stamina.

won't do anything for the technical skills you need to descend fast though, although fitness and stamina will always help concentration.

I do both and as others have said it does help.

It's no replacement as it tends to be a constant effort which makes different demands on you compared to the than the more interval like demands of MTB.

It certainly increases cardio fitness and leg strength overall. I often ride the same road loops and look to do intervals by attacking some Strava segments then recovering. I also have a 14 mile loop I ride flat out to give me an indication of how fit/strong/fast I am.

It's also good when you've not a lot of time and the trails are in a mess but the weather is dry. Lot's of time in the saddle as there is no bike cleaning to be done.

I want all my posts formatted like therevokid's - how do I do that?

Use < br >

All riding is good and the best bit about the road is that you can control the intensity of the workout
the other thing is you tend to not stop as often
I dont tend to ride the road that often these days and only for really big/long run outs

Chapa you should get a SS as plenty of rivvy is usable all year round.

the climb all the way to the mast up Wilderswood is a proper test 😉

It does depend on where you live though: if it's fairly flat then you are going to be doing constant effort unless you make a point of doing intervals or fartlek type training. If you live in a hilly area as I do then you can get some really good workouts - I've a ride that's only 31Km long but has 1200 metres of climbing in it with six big hills and a few smaller ones. The big hills range from four to thirteen minutes of riding and from around 8% to 25% in steepness, let's just say if I go for it then I know I've had a workout!

rone - Member
I'm with TurnerGuy.

If you train long hard efforts on MTB you can get exceptional fitness. Mix up the bumpy sprinty stuff with long sessions, then no problem. Your heart doesn't know the difference between bikes

It doesn't, but it's way easier (as you can control efforts, and find groups to train into push you) and time efficient to get fit on a road bike.

You'll agree if you ever get one - everyone with one here is against you!

herevokid - Member

for those who lose the "sprint" or "top end" ability ... try intervals
whilst out road riding. riding at threshold ... o u c h ...

Yes, that's what I was on about really.

I'd made the mistake of keeping doing the same hills at about the same speed - so as I got fitter it went from threshold to just under threshold.

everyone with one here is against you!

Erm, I think we're all right. Nobody's saying road bikes make you less fit.

All riding is good

No it's not! I am in my intervals phase and had to stop myself riding in order to recover from Tuesday's 5x 15minutes Z4. I wanted to get out last night but it would have been junk (but fun) miles that would have reduced the quality of my Z5 intervals today.

Why not just throw a leg over a Road bike instead of spending it on here?