How Fit Is A Trials Rider?

We had pro trials rider and Drop and Roll Tour star Ali Clarkson in our Wahoo Pain Cave for fitness testing recently.

If you don't follow Ali, he is a Professional Trials rider and Social Media Influencer from Hebdon Bridge in Yorkshire. He starting riding mountain bikes as a teenager and cycling soon became his number one passion. Mountain biking developed into bike trials which snowballed into competing in trials competitions. His career highlights have included becoming British Champion, placing 4th in Europe and winning a round of the Trials World Cup too!

In recent years Ali has moved to Glasgow and his career has transitioned to riding 'street trials', performing worldwide at major events with Danny MacAskill and the Drop And Roll Tour as well as creating weekly content for his YouTube channel. Recently Ali has been tackling high mountains on his mountain bike and competing in enduro races too.

Ali often gets asked by his fans if he trains for his riding, and if so what training does he do?

The short answer is 'no, he does not train'. Aside from riding trials he does not follow any regime or training plan, so we thought it was a good opportunity to step in and help!

What we can already assume is that Ali's explosive power is very good. Just look at how high he can bunny-hop! However, we suspect that he can improve his general fitness, endurance and aerobic efficiency. By boosting his general fitness he should feel the benefits not only on his mountain bike but also on longer sections on his trials bike. He should be able to ride stronger for longer and recover faster too.

So we put Ali to the test with a peak power test and MAP Ramp Test using our Wahoo Kickr set up partnered with Zwift. The goal was to set some fitness benchmarks and training zones so that Ali can follow our 6-Week Base Fitness Booster training plan - more on this soon...

If you want to see exactly how the testing went then check out Ali's vlog below. And remember to check back in a few weeks time to see how Ali's fitness training is progressing too!