The Best Workout You (Probably) Aren't Doing

It increases fat oxidation, spares your joints, and is a whole hell of a lot of fun.

Post summary

• Cycling has unique benefits over other endurance sports, and mountain biking is especially powerful.

• We’ll cover:

  • The metabolic upsides of cycling and why it often trumps running for metabolic health and fat burning.

  • Why biking compliments rucking and running.

  • The fascinating cognitive benefits of mountain biking.

  • The connection between mountain biking and meditation.

  • Why mountain biking is safer than road cycling.

• For those not interested in biking, we’ll cover how you can get the same powerful effects from other activities.

• The most effective advice for getting started.

Housekeeping

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Podcast version of this post

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The post

I recently returned to an old mistress. She’s beaten me down and burned me out. She’s dragged me across the desert and broiled me under its cancerous rays.

Along the way, I’ve been punctured by vicious cacti and agave. I’ve encountered freak fauna like snakes and scorpions and poison lizards. I’ve been torn by serrated rocks. I’ve eaten dirt and experienced delirium and dehydration.

I started mountain biking again.

During my summers in college, all I did was mountain bike. Life was a repeating cycle of work, bike, eat.

Then I graduated and moved to an apartment in New York City that was roughly seven square feet larger than the bathroom of a 747. The mountain bike stayed home.

But I recently acquired a Specialized Stump EVO Comp Alloy. It’s a fantastic machine. A climber and a descender. Hell on the straightaways and light and nimble on the turns. It’s a lot of fun—a two-wheeled reminder that, with the right activity, getting really fit can be a side effect of having fun.

In college, I wasn’t the over-analyzer I am now. I had yet to live in the rabbit hole of health, fitness, wellness, and how to live better.

But I’ve got a large property there now. As I rediscover my old hobby, I’ve been pondering all the upsides of cycling and mountain biking. Of which there are many …

Five Benefits of Mountain Biking

Note: Many of you won’t want to bike, so I’ve listed other ways to get each benefit.

1. More fat-burning and metabolic fitness

The exercise physiologist Alan Couzens notes that top cyclists tend to have significantly better metabolic fitness than top runners.

In the context of exercise, he defines metabolic fitness as your body’s ability to burn fat for energy. It’s a key to health and performance.

Cyclists often have double the rate of fat burning compared to runners. And why is that?

• Couzens explains that having a high and broad fat-burning base takes many hours of cardio.

• But, Couzens wrote, “the trouble with running (is) … if you go long enough to the point that it is metabolically challenging, it leads to too much muscle damage.”

• I.e., The time you can spend running—and, in turn, building metabolic fitness—is limited by the fact that your muscles and tendons can only take so much impact.

• For example, top cyclists might spend 25 to 30 hours a week on the bike whereas top runners can only take half of that.

• Hence, cyclists build better metabolic fitness because their bodies can withstand far more hours spinning pedals than it can pounding pavement.

Couzens’ takeaway: “Personally, I think all runners should bike for their metabolic work.”

Note: This likely matters most under two conditions:

• If running leaves you feeling pounded.

• If you exercise more than, say, 10 hours a week.

How to get this benefit without mountain biking

Find a form of low-impact cardio you enjoy and do it long and often. The words “low-impact” are key.

Road cycling and swimming work. So does time on indoor, low-impact cardio machines. Think: spin bikes, rowing machines, the SkiErg, VersaClimbers, etc.

2. It offsets rucking and running

This relates to the above point. But it feels worth a callout.

Running puts the most stress on your joints. Rucking is next. Then walking.

We all need to stress our joints—that strengthens them. But too much can cause injuries.

Adding mountain biking or road cycling to your running and rucking routine gives you outdoor cardio without as much impact.

That can allow you to run and ruck for more years. And if you can run and ruck for more years, you’ll probably live longer.

How to get this without mountain biking

Just like the point above, any low-impact cardio does this.

But being outdoors has health and happiness benefits that a sterile gym doesn’t.

I’ve also found I exercise longer outdoors, probably because the changing landscape incentivizes me to go further.

3. Moving meditation

I have to be fully present and aware as I bomb down single track. The world melts. And that’s what I like most about the sport.

I recently listened to a podcast where the philosopher Sam Harris postulated that when people get “hooked” on a sport, they’re not so much hooked on the sport as they are the psychological state the sport thrusts them into.

We’re talking about states where your ego fades, and full presence emerges. He said:

The clarity of no ego, just experience … Even if you can only experience that for short stretches at a time and punctuate your life with two seconds of truly open free attention, doing that 100 times a day is a very different day and very different life than never doing it at all.

Harris noted that this state can happen with all sorts of activities, from mountain biking to surfing. But when it happens through an activity, it usually happens by accident:

Like, once a week when you’re surfing. And then you come away thinking surfing is so good, right? Like, (you think) it’s all about the surfing, right? No. It’s about the capacity of the mind to become fully immersed in the present moment such that you’re no longer abstracting yourself away from experience and looking over your own shoulder and constructing a self that is in relation to experience.

Harris was speaking about this topic in the context of meditation—how a person, with the right training, might be able to find that egoless and fully present state on purpose. Not just by stumbling into it with surfing or mountain biking.

I think he’s right.

But I also think endurance sports give raving maniacs like us—people who are wired for action and generally detest chronic disease—a way to experience that state. And, if we’re lucky, that opens a door for us to explore how to find the state elsewhere.

How to get this benefit without mountain biking

Any activity can force you into this state. In my experience, it happens in technically demanding activities, where success and safety demand attention. Mountain biking, swimming, shooting, trail running, etc, etc, etc.

Once you meet the state, consider how you might find that state in other areas of your life.

4. Legit brain benefits

Mountain biking is, at times, as challenging mentally as it is physically. I have to determine how I’ll pace myself through obstacles, consider the physics of curves, account for the heat, and much more.

Humans evolved to be physically active while doing cognitive work.

Our ancestors ran across a rough and technical landscape while tracking animals. The marriage of the physical and psychological was a unique and necessary stimulus for brain development, according the researchers at the University of Southern California.

And this mental work still matters today. “When you combine physical acts with cognitive acts, it tends to have a really beneficial effect on the brain,” said David Raichlen, the lead researcher.

He thinks physical activity that simultaneously challenges your mind could help prevent age-related mental decline and fend off diseases like Alzheimer’s. This is likely one reason people who exercise outside tend to age better.

How to get this benefit without mountain biking

Any outdoor cardio will do—the more technical the terrain, the better.

For example, you’ll probably get more benefits on a trail than on a sidewalk because trails add more variables into the equation.

5. No cars!

The National Safety Council notes that deaths from cycling “increased 37% in the last 10 years (from 900 in 2012 to 1,230 in 2021).”

The vast majority of these, 70 percent, involve vehicles.

Here’s a deeply reported story about cyclist road deaths. Tragically, the author of the piece died after being struck by a vehicle while cycling.

Humans have made incredible leaps in car safety. Modern cars are packed with sensors to keep us in lanes and detect pedestrians or to become a bouncy castle of airbags should we get in an accident.

And yet we manage to screw it up and kill more cyclists because we can’t get off our damn phones while behind the wheel.

Trails don’t have texting drivers.

Sure, there are likely higher risks of crashes. But the crashes are less likely to kill you—and you can modify your risk by choosing the right trail and riding within your comfort zone, whereas you can’t control a texting driver.

A few tips to start

Map your trail with MTBProject

I started biking on the trails right off my front porch—the same trails I run weekly. This was a miscalculation.

These trails are the technical equivalent of a double black diamond ski run, whereas my mountain biking skills had devolved to something better suited for a wide and well-groomed green run.

This was an anxiety-inducing fun killer. I spent a lot of time walking my bike through jagged rock gardens.

So I started consulting MTBProject to find trails better suited to my tax bracket.

• MTBProject maps and rates mountain biking trails like ski runs: green, blue, black.

Use flat pedals

You might have heard you need to use “clipless pedals.” They’re the bike pedals that secure your foot to the pedal. The argument is that clipless pedals are more efficient.

But some smart physiologists are questioning that idea. They believe many people would ride better and have more fun using flat pedals. Flat pedals are the standard pedals your foot doesn’t clip into.

One significant upside of flat pedals—especially for beginners—is that you can easily remove your foot from the pedal if you begin to fall. That makes them safer—and more fun.

• For those who want to go down the rabbit hole, here’s a 70-page Flat Pedal Manifesto from one of the world’s top mountain bike trainers.

Remember: Speed is security

When you encounter an obstacle on the trail, it’s natural to want to slow down and take it as carefully as possible.

But you should actually do the opposite. The pro biker and coach Selene Yeager explains:

Holding speed—and even speeding up—when the terrain gets challenging makes clearing tough sections of trail easier because your bike has the one thing it needs most to keep moving forward: momentum.

Think of it this way: If you were to take a bike wheel and give it a delicate push, it would tip over in a few feet. But if you push it hard, it’ll stay upright much longer.

Don’t look at what you want to avoid

“Target fixation” is an attentional phenomenon in which focusing on an object increases your chances of colliding with it.

We’ve been aware of target fixation’s dangers as far back as World War II, when we trained pilots to look where they wanted their plane to go, not at what they wanted it to avoid.

As you ride, don’t look at the obstacles you want to miss.

Instead, look forward, far ahead on the trail. Note forthcoming obstacles. As you near them, keep them in your periphery as you navigate them.

Get fitted for a decent bike

The technology on mountain bikes has advanced significantly since I was in college. I’ll spare you the technical details because who the hell cares. But TL;DR: new bikes are lighter, easier to ride, more forgiving, and more fun than ever.

When I get into any sport that requires gear, I usually ask people in the know, “What’s the Honda Accord of (insert the piece of gear, like “mountain bikes,” “golf clubs,” “precision rifles,” etc)?

The Honda Accord is a good car. It’s an upgrade from the cheapest base-level vehicle. It’s functional, dependable, decently appointed, and reliable. And it won’t break the bank.

But it’s not a great car. It doesn’t have the best engine, transmission, appointments, bells and whistles, etc.

I messaged my friend Gloria Liu and asked her that exact question—what’s the Honda Accord of mountain bikes?

Gloria is a bike industry veteran and the former gear editor of Bicycling magazine. She’s probably ridden more bikes than anyone.

The Specialized EVO Comp Alloy fits that bill. She also suggested I look at:

• Giant Trance x 29

• Canyon Neuron CF 8

• Santa Cruz TallBoy

Go to a local shop and get fitted for the right size.

Yes, local bike shops are sometimes staffed by snobby jerks, as Gloria has brilliantly written about. So if your first experience at a shop isn’t good, cycle through shops until you find someplace friendly.

Have fun, don’t die, speed is security.

-Michael

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