Mountain bike team

Bio

I'm Tyler Hemmings and I'm the Team Captain for the San Marin - Novato High Mountain bike team.

I've been on this team for two years, this now being my third, and I've managed to progress greatly and even podium three times for the NICA NorCal races for San Marin. And Once for the Good News Race series.

Fitness components

Mountain biking requires a wide variety of fitness groups, in cross country racing this being mostly primarily leg strength and stamina to go 20-30 miles and well over a thousand feet of climbing based on just leg strength to get you there. While upper body strength is also important for keeping good control of the bike and not fatiguing over time.

Baseline testing

1.) One form of baseline testing to test your fitness for this sport is climbing, and more specifically speed to do so. This is a racing sport so being able to climb long distances quickly is crucially important, an example fo this could be climbing about a thousand feet in less than an hour or more preferably close to half that.

2.) A second test would be to test your downhill speed and ability to do so quickly, this which you could improve upon by timing yourself down specific downhills and being able to improve upon that time or be able to progress to do more technical downhill's.

My baseline testing:

For my uphill baseline i've treated the climb up Mt. Burdell as my baseline which I can do multiple times to test my leg strength and endurance, currently my time during this 1300 ft segment is 33 minutes which I aim to lower to 30 minutes by the end of my training season in march. You can also see on the left me training by doing steep uphill riding intervals.

For my downhill baseline I plan on improving upper body strength to be able to handle the roughness and vibrations of downhill. This I plan to by focusing on upper body workouts at least once a week week.


Smart Goals

First,

To Decrease my time up a thousand feet by 5 minutes by the end of the training season, this can be done by repetition of this goal and aiming to get a new personal record every two weeks. I trained roughly three to four times a week to get this done three rides a week with the team and one hard solo ride. I consistently kept this up and was able to increase my strength which will help me win more races and have better endurance. Below is my times at the start and at the end of the training system showing I met my goal as I decreased my time up a thousand feet from, 29.44 minutes -> 22.08 minutes. This overachieving my goal to decrease my time by 5 minutes and getting me feeling accomplished by achieving my goal.


Second Goal

A Second goal of mine, is to decrease my downhill time by focusing on upper body workouts, this can be accomplished by doing specific upper body workouts once a week. I can measure the growth of this by setting a baseline, in some basic upper body workouts such as, bench pressing and pull ups.

baseline: my maximum bench press was 135 pounds at the start of the season and able to do 10 pull ups

Improved: my maximum now is 145 pounds showing growth and a maximum of 11 pull ups.

This showcasing how I have increased my upper body strength and can help me improve my times going downhill while racing due to being able to more comfortably handle rough downhill conditions with more upper body strength.


Reflection:

Reflecting on this season of training, I feel healthy overall and just happier in general due to the increase in exercise in my life as it seems to add a sense of accomplishment each day, while also adding a decrease in stress and clearing of the mind.

After evaluating my goals I realize i'm happy all of them were achievable even if some were by a slim margin. I realized also that setting goals is a great way to see growth and make sure that improvement happens while also being able to quantify how much you improve. I look forward to changing my goals now and achieving new goals that seem harder and require more training and motivation.

During this season, my first season as a team captain I've felt a good amount of leadership which was weird adjusting too, however by keeping optimistc and looking to help others on the team I felt I've done wel leading and motivating others to get stronger as well.