This week’s workout of the week is not an eyeball bursting, high intensity workout. On the contrary, today is all about weight training for mountain biking and moto.

Although we love hard workouts, it seems we get a bashing for “always destroying people”. This is simply not true. The purpose of the Workout of the Week is to give you a good insight into the metabolic conditioning workouts we include in our programs, which also include numerous other methods including strength elements.

This week give you a strengthening movement that will also improve your balance, mobility and core – the Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat.

This is one of our favourite movements for riders, especially leading up to race season starting. The load is light compared to many lower body movements but the range is massive.

The Workout:

Complete 12 reps each leg with 1-2 minutes rest between for a total of 5 sets.

Start with a weight you find easy, and increase as you go. Once you have completed a set of difficult reps work your way back down the weight.

The pro riders completed sets of 12kg, 16kg, 20kg, 16kg, 12kg.

If you are in a “building” stage it would be better to keep all sets reasonably close to the maximum you can handle. But the pros we had in for this workout are either at the beginning of their season or just about to start. That’s the beauty of this movement – you can change the weight and reps and have vastly different result. Today, it’s about priming and preparing.

We love kettlebells but if you don’t have them you can use a dumbbell, barbell or pretty much anything you can hold. If using a barbell though, make sure you are safe and able to “fail safely”. It might not seem like a lot of weight but trust me, getting pinned to the bottom of a split squat isn’t hard, and if you are unprepared may also be very unsafe.

On that note, as with all of the content we create, if you are going to attempt any of it make sure you are well warmed up and have practiced correct form at substantially lighter loads before.

If you like this movement and have been seeing the benefits of our methods, you should definitely sign up to a full program and see how great it is. We’ll look after your weight training for mountain biking and moto. Our programs are there for riders who want direction in the gym to ensure they are getting the most out of their time. You might already be in the gym trying to work towards becoming a better rider, that’s great! But you can skip a few steps and let us do the hard work of deciding what to do.

Check out links below and sing up to your chosen discipline, if you’re not fully satisfied we’ll give you a full refund no questions asked.

It’s your time. Make it count.

Jonny