How to train it?
As our example of the wild downhiller above shows, almost the whole continuum needs to be trained for most events. Losing the pedalling ability = fitness mind-set helps achieve this also. You need to be powerful while pedalling yes certainly, but also powerful while standing tall and executing bunny hops, railing a turn, guiding and quickly re-directing your front-end out of the rocks on your 150mm trail bike etc; these scenarios all require power or some variant of it that falls along the strength–speed continuum. Your training should reflect that.
To keep things concise here I’m going to give you some ideas for both gym-based power training and on-the-bike based power training.
Gym-based
Exercise selection is always a debatable topic. So once again drop the ‘either or’ attitude and focus on results. Olympic lifts (snatch, clean and jerk and their parts), plyometrics, dumbbell or kettlebell based moves, speed and quickness drills or medicine ball work; it’s a long list of tools and means you can use to achieve your goals, so make sure you take your goals, experience level, event, and current fitness into hand when choosing.
Olympic lifts are amazing power builders, they are a full body exercise, using every last square cm of muscle, triple extension of the ankle, knee and hip as well as the upper body and torso but they need lots of practice and specific skill to get the most from them, so maybe not the best option for beginners.
Using the key parts of the Olympic lifts (hip hinge, explosive triple extension) with kettlebells or dumbbells in the form of snacthes, swings and hang cleans is a fantastic idea for athletes of all levels to build power. Heavier weights build power and strength-speed; lighter weights can be used at greater velocity to build speed-strength or speed. Lighter weight used repeatedly in a circuit type fashion can then be used to build power repeatability or endurance!
Likewise plyometric exercises can build huge amounts of power and explosiveness but need to be introduced slowly for beginners and used cleverly and sparingly in those racing or riding a lot. However, depth jumps, tuck jumps, explosive push ups, single leg bounds etc… are all great ways to build power and require next to no equipment.
Medicine balls offer amazing versatility and fun options and depending on the weight of the ball used can be used to develop power along the full range of the continuum (see the pattern?). Medicine ball routines (overhead slams, med ball explosive chest throw, sidestep wall throws, exercises with a partner) are maybe one of my favourite tools to use with athletes for power development as they are cheap, simple and can cover so many movement patterns that transfer over to your bike riding as well as being less risky than Olympic lifting for the beginner!
Med balls bring us on to our last point for your gym-based power training and an often overlooked one: training in more than one plane of motion. With things like Olympic lifts, kettle-bell swings, or classic/standard plyometrics you train by either moving your body or a weight up and down or forward or back. That’s all in the same plane of motion which isn’t what the characteristics of the sport are; in MTB we have to rotate the hips and shoulders and power through one foot at a time to hop and change line. We must be powerful up and down and forward and backward but also in rotation and laterally, so your training should reflect that with lateral explosive movements (lateral lunge, lateral bench jumps), rotational med-ball moves, single leg power (plyos, jumps etc…).
