PART 1 HOW TO FEND OFF FATIGUE
No matter the trail, weather, your skill level or fitness, there is one thing all mountain bikers have in common; at some point, we will reach the limit of what our body is capable of. The tell-tale signs may be different; from bursting lungs to burning muscles to our mind begging us to ease back; but the outcome is the same – we are going to have to drop the intensity of our ride if we want to continue. We are experiencing fatigue.
The good news is we can normally keep riding if we ease back a little (as opposed to exhaustion, where we simply cannot keep riding at all). However, fatigue will still limit our performance, so it’s useful to try to understand it a little more in order to minimise its impact.
WHAT IS FATIGUE?
This may seem incredible, but researchers have not agreed on a universal definition of fatigue in sport and exercise. The lack of a universal definition is important for one good reason: how can you fully understand something if you can’t even define it? The scientific literature is filled with dozens of definitions of fatigue, which are likely driven in part by the expertise of the scientists doing the research (e.g.
