[bugbear6]

hi, i'm new to the forum and about a year into mountain biking, anyhoo, on to my question. fitness?, i started off easy last year and gradually built up skills and distance alongside fitness, i had a great summers hard riding but it has kind of ended in disaster, i picked up a quad injury late in summer and battled on not thinking much of it, i went to a sports rehab therapist and they told me that, apart from my cleats being in the wrong position and my seat height being wrong that my body had "crashed" through overtraining, this is all new to me as i spent the prior 19 years of my life hard living so fitness is new to me, i train on a turbo trainer with carmicheal training systems and all in all i would have said that i was pretty fit, my therapist did say that i was going too hard too often,so my point is, what would you say is a good training regime, assuming that i get through rehab ok injury free.
i'm the kind of guy that goes all out and being as i'm doing this on my own it would be great to know bout recovery times etc, how often to ride etc, bear in mind that through summer i was riding about ten miles every day hard, now that i'm in rehab with the injury it'll take me a long time to get back where i was. enough of my ranting

 

[zebrahum]

Well I'm going to play the bad guy here; why are you training? Will you be racing at a high level? If not, forget "training", ditch the Carmicheal training system (you don't need to be Lance), and start riding with different goals in mind. If you're riding trails, find a trail system and set up some internal goals there. Climb the hard hill faster, do the loop faster, or more importantly, find someone to ride with and beat them down. Road biking, same thing. A training system feeds overwork because they're designed to kick your ass. If you aren't racing at a high level, it's too much. Find people to ride with, push yourself under a different standard. Forget your VO2 max and find out if you can clean the rock garden or bunny hop the log across the trail. You'll progress faster and without the physical damage that comes with training out of your body's ability.

 

[bugbear6]

your words ring true and are very similar to what i think my sports physio is going to say today, the cts is ditched, i think you're right about finding more rewarding goals out on the trail, and i suppose i have to admit there isn't much likelyhood of me racing, although my 16 year old son being uber fit does pose a challenge out on the trail, i agree with all you said and am just going to relax more out on the trail and start nailing the things i can, thanks for the advice again

 

[bugbear6]

well, i saw my sports therapist today and as predicted he said that i didn't really need to be burning on turbo trainers like i was training for a race, he did however discover a tear at the top of my calves which i had thought was a hamstring injury, seems i have been putting a lot of heavy stress on a body thats not ready for it, he also said that due to my previous lifestyle and medication that i was losing a great percentage of strength due to poor neuro muscular complicated stuff, so he's sent me to the gym to work on strength for my rehab, looks like i'll be stronger come spring, heck who knows, maybe in a years time i'll have the legs for a bit of downhilling

 

[zebrahum]

Sounds good, get healed up and you'll be ready to do whatever you want out there. If you're downhilling, don't forget your upper body, it's surprising how much of a full body workout running DH runs can be. Your son will be exactly what you need to ride to a fully appropriate purpose. If he's faster, keep riding until you can keep up, then keep riding until you make him need to keep up with you.

 

[bugbear6]

thanks for the encouraging words, have, just ordered a book to help me with cycling specific workouts, legs started to loosen off today with all the stretching and rehab exercises i have been given to do, have been given the all clear to commute lol, but have been warned about hammering it so i gotta be a good boy