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Back when I used to rock climb a lot it was important to train the muscles you don't use climbing, e.g. by doing push ups to counteract all the pull ups you do on the rock face (not literal pullups most of the time of course but the effect on muscles is similar). Otherwise you'd get injured due to muscle pairs getting out of balance.
Now I'm hardly climbing but on the bike a lot more. I'm wondering if the opposite is true? Do I need to do pull ups to compensate for all the pushing down on bars?
I wouldn't have thought the level of muscular effort was anything like climbing so I'd say "no" for the reason you state (it's certainly not something I've ever heard of before in terms of cycling!), however you should do pullups because [i]everyone[/i] should do pullups. 🙂
I don't think it's a simplistic as "pairs of muscles ended up unbalanced" but I do think you need to work on strength and flexibility if you want to keep enjoying riding hard. For that I'd start here:
Where did all this baloney about opposing muscle pairs come from anyway? It's as bad as the nonsense about tight muscles and tendons. Your body responds to the stresses you place on it and is a remarkable self-regulating organism.
Any kind of cycling requires good overall muscle tone and because it exercises a limited set of leg muscles selectively it's not a bad idea to do something else like a few brisk walks up and down hills and some upper-body toning stuff if you're really keen.
The same applies - you need to keep everything as balanced as possible otherwise the weak part will start to become a problem. There's quite a few threads on here about bad/sore back after riding for example which relate to this.
@globalti - the opposing muscle "thing" in climbing isn't biceps vs triceps but more about the effect on body posture.
it's not a bad idea to do something else like a few brisk walks up and down hills
I'm already ahead of the curve here as I make a point of doing this on most rides.
Your body responds to the stresses you place on it and is a remarkable self-regulating organism.
That isn't true. Your body ends up adapting to the greatest loads upon it and if spend a lot of time doing one particular thing with a narrow range of loads you risk suffering problems in wider life due to this. Mountain biking is better for you than road biking on that front because it works the body more evenly head to toe but it still tends towards causing poor posture and poor core strength.
It's the same from pretty much any sport that someone specialises in be they a keen amateur or a pro. The pro is likely to get the problems sooner but with modern sports science they work hard at compensating for them through extra training. A keen amateur may only end up with issues after decades but it takes a long time to unwind that situation.
If the loads are that of being a hunter-gatherer, then yes, the human body has evolved to handle that brilliantly - but aside from competitive foraging your chosen sport is unlikely to be something we're truly built for! 😉
I wouldn't have thought the level of muscular effort was anything like climbing so I'd say "no" for the reason you state
Mostly I've been practicing my jumps lately (repeated runs of the same set) and it certainly feels like it. Lots of arm/leg compression rather than cardio.
Where did all this baloney about opposing muscle pairs come from anyway?
Go to a climbing wall. See the guys who walk all hunched over like a monkey? They're the ones who don't do push ups.
I wouldn't have thought the level of muscular effort was anything like climbing so I'd say "no" for the reason you state (it's certainly not something I've ever heard of before in terms of cycling!)
Go ride a pump track and report back! 😉
I wouldn't have thought it would matter too much in mtb. I think I pull on the bars (pedalling standing up, lifting front end up) as I do pushing on the bars through pumping and landing jumps.
If you do think there's an imbalance, I think seated rows would be better than pull ups.
A bit. Train hamstrings and abs if you want to help keep everything even.