HOW TO GET BETTER AT CLIMBING ON A MOUNTAIN BIKE
Climbing fitness isn’t one thing. If you want to climb faster, clean harder climbs or stop fading on big rides, you need to understand what’s actually holding you back — and train accordingly.
There’s one answer that keeps showing up in my MTB Fitness Assessment.
When I ask mountain bikers where they most want to improve:
Climbing.
Again and again.
That’s probably not surprising.
I’ve yet to meet a mountain biker who thinks they’re good enough at climbing.
We want to climb faster. Clean steeper trails. Stop getting dropped by our friends. Ride bigger days. Get further into the mountains. And arrive at the top with enough left to actually enjoy the descent.
Because climbing isn’t just fitness.
Climbing is freedom and capability.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about looking up at a hill or mountain and knowing you have the physical capacity to get yourself to the top.
I think that’s one of the reasons so many of us love living and riding in mountain towns. Being fit enough to move through the mountains under your own power opens up an enormous playground.
A little while ago, I wrote about the idea that there isn’t really one type of “good climber.”
Some riders are great at long steady climbs but struggle with steep punches. Others can smash short climbs but fade as the ride gets longer.
If you haven’t read that article, start with What Kind of Climber Are You? Find Your Weakness and Fix It This Off-Season.
But that leads to a more interesting question:
WHY?
If you know the kind of climbing you struggle with, what is actually causing it — and what should you train to get better?
Most riders default to some version of:
“I need better cardio.”
Sometimes they’re right.
But that’s not nearly specific enough to tell us what to train.
Getting better at mountain bike climbing can involve aerobic fitness, sustainable power, strength, muscular endurance, anaerobic capacity, durability, pacing, fueling and technical skill.
And the importance of each changes depending on the climb.
A short, steep technical climb asks something very different of you than a sustained 14% grind.
Both are different again from climbing for an hour or more.
You can be excellent at one and terrible at another.
So before deciding how to improve your climbing, we need to figure out what the climb is actually asking you to do.
Here in Squamish, three very different climbs illustrate that perfectly.
Value Added: 424 m long, 50 m of climbing, approximately 11.8% average grade. Short, steep and highly technical.
Debeck’s Hill: 2.2 km long, 300 m of climbing, approximately 13.6% average grade. Sustained, steep and technically straightforward.
Elfin Lakes: roughly 11 km one way with around 600–675 m of climbing. A long-duration climbing objective.
They’re all climbing.
But they’re not the same physiological problem.
1. SHORT, STEEP AND HIGHLY TECHNICAL MTB CLIMBS
Squamish example: Value Added
The Value Added climb is only 424 metres long with 50 metres of elevation gain — about 11.8% average grade.
Reduce it to those numbers and it doesn’t sound particularly intimidating.
The numbers don’t tell the story.
Value Added is highly technical, with sections that can be difficult to clean even when you’re completely fresh.
You’re not simply sitting on the bike and producing power against gravity.
You’re trying to produce high pedal forces while managing grip, body position, line choice, momentum, gearing and a series of difficult technical moves.
And you’re doing all of that while your heart rate is climbing and your legs are starting to hurt.
What does a short technical climb demand?
Your aerobic system is still doing plenty of work, even during relatively short hard efforts.
But technical climbing also repeatedly asks you to produce output above the level you could sustain continuously.
A steep pitch might require a sudden increase in pedal force.
A rock or root might require an acceleration.
Losing momentum might force you into an enormous effort just to keep the bike moving.
Then you get a few slightly easier pedal strokes and your aerobic system immediately starts helping you recover before the next move arrives.
So this kind of climbing relies on a combination of:
Strength and torque — can you produce enough force through the pedals when the trail demands it?
Anaerobic capacity — can you temporarily produce output above your sustainable aerobic level?
Aerobic fitness — can you support those efforts and recover between them?
Repeatability — can you do it again when the next difficult move arrives?
And then there’s the part that makes this mountain biking:
You still have to ride the bike.
A rider who chooses a good line, carries momentum and applies force at exactly the right moment can get through a move much more efficiently than someone who arrives off-line, loses traction and almost stalls.
So fitness and skill aren’t separate problems here.
As fatigue builds, your technical execution can deteriorate. You make more mistakes. Those mistakes cost additional energy. And now the climb becomes even harder.
TRY THIS: REPEAT A TECHNICAL CLIMB
Find a short technical climb that’s difficult for you but achievable.
Ride it with intent, recover enough that you can ride it well again, and repeat it 3–5 times.
The goal isn’t simply to make your heart rate as high as possible.
Try to keep cleaning the climb as fatigue develops.
If every repetition eventually turns into bad lines, wheelspin and dabs, simply adding more reps probably isn’t helping.
We’re trying to improve your ability to produce force and execute skills under pressure, not practise riding badly.
And don’t forget the gym.
If producing enough force is genuinely part of the problem, get stronger.
Squats, split squats, hinges and other appropriately programmed lower-body strength work can increase the force you have available when the trail demands it.
Sometimes better climbing does mean better cardio.
Sometimes it means having more force available.
Sometimes it means better skills.
Usually, it’s some combination of them.
2. SUSTAINED, STEEP MTB CLIMBS
Squamish example: Debeck’s Hill
Now change the problem.
Debeck’s is approximately 2.2 kilometres long with 300 metres of elevation gain — an average grade of around 13.6%.
It’s actually steeper on average than our Value Added example.
But technically, it’s much more straightforward.
That completely changes the challenge.
There isn’t one extremely difficult move that’s going to stop you.
You can’t rely on one huge effort to get through it.
You just have to keep producing.
And producing.
And producing.
Now the aerobic engine becomes increasingly important
One of the major determinants of endurance performance is how much energy your body can produce aerobically.
You’ll often hear this discussed in relation to VO₂max.
You can think of VO₂max as one measure of the size of your aerobic engine.
But having a big engine isn’t enough.
You also need to be able to use a large proportion of it for a sustained period.
Research on trained cyclists completing a 20-minute uphill time trial found that peak oxygen uptake and the intensity riders could sustain around their upper aerobic range explained 91% of the variation in relative mean power.
In simple terms, a sustained climb asks two big questions:
How big is your aerobic engine?
And:
How much of it can you actually sustain?
That’s a very different problem from getting through one technical punch.
Body mass matters — but don’t obsess over it
Point a bike uphill and you’re using energy to move both yourself and your bike against gravity.
That makes power relative to body mass increasingly important.
But that doesn’t mean every mountain biker who wants to climb faster should immediately try to lose weight.
There are two sides to relative power.
You can decrease the denominator.
Or you can increase the numerator.
For many recreational mountain bikers, becoming fitter and stronger is a much more productive place to focus than obsessing over the scale.
Strength hasn’t disappeared
Debeck’s might be predominantly an aerobic problem, but a gradient approaching 14% still demands substantial pedal force.
Terrain and gearing can force cadence down.
And something else happens as you get tired.
When you’re fresh, the small rocks and imperfections on Debeck’s aren’t particularly significant.
Near the top, they can become surprisingly problematic.
Your line gets slightly less precise.
You don’t maintain momentum quite as well.
Standing up to accelerate becomes more expensive.
A rock you’d barely have noticed at the bottom can suddenly disrupt your rhythm.
That’s an important mountain-bike lesson:
Fatigue doesn’t just make you slower. It can make technically simple terrain harder to ride.
TRY THIS: SUSTAINED CLIMBING INTERVALS
Find a steady climb and try:
3 × 8 minutes hard but controlled
4 minutes easy recovery between efforts
The important word is controlled.
Don’t smash the first interval and then desperately survive the other two.
Try to cover approximately the same amount of ground on each effort.
If the first rep is heroic and the third is a disaster, you probably went too hard.
As you adapt, you can gradually increase the amount of quality work:
3 × 8 minutes → 3 × 10 minutes → 2 × 15 minutes
That doesn’t mean this is the perfect progression for every rider.
But it illustrates an important training principle:
Increase the amount of useful work rather than simply trying to make every workout hurt more.
Because a session can be incredibly hard without actually targeting your biggest opportunity.
The best workout can still be terrible programming.
3. LONG MTB CLIMBS AND BIG DAYS
Squamish example: Elfin Lakes
Now extend the problem again.
The ride toward Elfin Lakes is roughly 11 kilometres one way, gaining around 600–675 metres, although the gradient and climbing aren’t completely continuous.
We’re no longer talking about getting through a short sequence of technical moves.
We’re not even talking about sustaining one hard 15- or 20-minute effort.
We’re talking about long-duration climbing.
And as duration increases, the question starts to change.
It’s no longer only:
How much performance can you produce?
Increasingly, it becomes:
HOW MUCH OF THAT PERFORMANCE CAN YOU PRESERVE?
This is where durability becomes important.
What is durability?
Durability describes your ability to preserve performance after you’ve already accumulated substantial work.
That’s incredibly relevant to mountain biking because most of our riding doesn’t happen when we’re perfectly fresh.
We climb.
We descend.
We make hard efforts.
We accelerate.
We burn through carbohydrate.
We accumulate muscular fatigue.
And then we ask ourselves to climb again.
Research gives us an idea of how substantial that deterioration can be.
In one study of well-trained amateur cyclists, 20-minute performance dropped by around 10% after riders had accumulated 1,000 kJ of cycling work.
Another study found that more successful amateur cyclists lost about 6.5% of their 20-minute power after accumulated work, while less successful riders lost approximately 12.5%.
Two riders who look relatively similar when they’re fresh can therefore become very different riders after they’ve already done a lot of work.
Having a big engine doesn’t automatically mean you’re good at preserving it.
Pacing and fueling are now part of performance
As rides get longer, what you do with your fitness matters more.
If you hammer every early climb because you feel fantastic, you’re changing what will be available later.
If you don’t eat enough, you’re changing the problem.
If you don’t drink enough, you’re changing the problem.
If every small rise turns into an opportunity to race your friends, you’re changing the problem.
Long-duration climbing combines aerobic fitness with durability, pacing, fueling and muscular endurance.
And remember:
Getting to the top isn’t really the goal.
You want to get to the top and still be able to ride your bike.
There’s not much point spending months developing your descending skills if every big ride has you arriving at the top completely destroyed.
The fitter, more durable rider has more physical — and mental — capacity available for the descent.
TRY THIS: MAKE YOUR ENDURANCE RIDES ACTUALLY ENDURANCE RIDES
If the goal of the day is aerobic development, stop turning every climb into an interval.
Ride at a genuinely conversational pace.
Then gradually increase the duration of selected rides as your capacity develops.
That might look something like:
90 minutes → 2 hours → 2½ hours → 3 hours
That isn’t a prescription to add 30 minutes every single week.
The point is simply to progressively build your exposure to longer-duration work rather than expecting your endurance to magically appear.
And while you’re doing it:
Eat.
If you’re going to ride for several hours, practise fueling while you’re training.
Don’t under-fuel a long ride and then conclude that your endurance sucks when you fall apart two hours later.
Fueling isn’t cheating.
It’s part of endurance performance.
THREE MTB CLIMBS. THREE DIFFERENT PROBLEMS.
Look at our three Squamish examples again.
Value Added: short, steep and highly technical.
The question is:
Can you produce the required output and still execute difficult moves?
Debeck’s: sustained, steep and relatively straightforward.
The question becomes:
Can you sustain a high enough output for long enough that fatigue itself starts affecting your riding?
Elfin Lakes: long-duration climbing and accumulated work.
Now we’re asking:
Can you preserve your climbing ability as the ride gets longer?
That’s why:
“I NEED BETTER CARDIO” ISN’T A DIAGNOSIS.
SO WHAT SHOULD YOU TRAIN TO BECOME A BETTER CLIMBER?
Here’s the practical starting point.
You struggle with short, steep technical climbs
Look at strength, high-force efforts, repeated hard efforts and technical execution.
Spend some time actually practising difficult climbs rather than only training your fitness away from them.
You get dropped on sustained climbs
Your aerobic engine and sustainable output deserve a closer look.
Build your aerobic base and include appropriately progressed sustained climbing work.
You’re good early but fade on big rides
Look at aerobic volume, durability, pacing and fueling.
Make some of your endurance riding genuinely easy and gradually build the amount of work you can tolerate.
You’re pretty good at all three but still want to climb faster
You might not have an obvious hole.
You may simply need to raise your overall capacity.
Not everyone needs a weakness “fixed.”
Sometimes you just need to get fitter.
KEEP THE STRENGTHS. TRAIN THE WEAKNESS.
Here’s where things become more complicated.
Most mountain bikers don’t fit perfectly into one of those boxes.
You might be very strong but aerobically limited.
You might have a huge aerobic engine but struggle to preserve your performance over a long day.
You might have excellent endurance but lack the strength or technical ability to get through steep moves.
You might have several opportunities.
Or you might be well balanced and simply need to raise the whole thing.
That’s why the interesting question isn’t really:
“How do I improve my climbing?”
It’s:
WHAT IS LIMITING MY CLIMBING?
Once we know that, we can make much better decisions about what deserves your limited training time.
You don’t need to stop doing the things you’re already good at.
Give them enough attention to maintain them.
Then put more of your resources into the quality with the greatest opportunity to improve.
Keep the strengths. Train the weakness.
That’s the difference between collecting workouts and actually programming training.
SO HOW DO WE ACTUALLY FIND YOUR CLIMBING WEAKNESS?
This is where I’ve become really interested.
In my previous article, What Kind of Climber Are You?, I asked riders to start identifying the kind of climbing that gives them trouble.
Here, we’ve started breaking down why different climbs expose different weaknesses and what you can begin doing about them.
But there’s still a problem.
What you think your weakness is isn’t necessarily the whole story.
Maybe you think you’re terrible at long climbs because you don’t have enough endurance.
But perhaps your fresh climbing speed isn’t particularly high in the first place.
Maybe you think your aerobic fitness is poor, when the bigger problem is that your performance deteriorates unusually quickly as fatigue accumulates.
Or perhaps your fitness is actually pretty good, but steep technical terrain exposes a completely different limitation.
So how do we separate those things?
How do we actually measure which part of your climbing performance is limiting you?
That’s the question I’m working on next.
I’ve been developing a practical field-testing protocol specifically for mountain-bike climbing.
The goal is to help distinguish different climbing strengths and weaknesses without requiring a physiology lab, smart trainer or even a power meter.
But I’m not going to invent a test and simply declare that it works.
More than 20 mountain bikers are currently helping me pilot it, across different ability levels and riding backgrounds.
I’m interested in whether the differences we can measure actually line up with the strengths and weaknesses riders experience on the trail.
I’m not ready to give you the answer yet.
But once the data starts coming in, I’ll share what we learn.
Because ultimately, I don’t want to give mountain bikers another number to obsess over.
I want to answer a much more useful question:
WHAT SHOULD YOU TRAIN IF YOU WANT TO BECOME A BETTER CLIMBER?
If you haven’t already, take the MTB Fitness Assessment and start identifying where your biggest opportunities might be.
And if you already know climbing is costing you rides and want a training plan built around your strengths, weaknesses, riding and available training time, that’s exactly what my coaching is designed to do.