Use this workout, devised by mountain bike world cup champion Greg Minaar, to increase your pedal power, strength endurance and ability to control the bike around berms, over jumps and down steep trails.

If you want to build up your cycling strength it’s not enough to just hop on a bike and go for a ride. This will only train your aerobic fitness rather than your muscle-based anaerobic fitness. ‘I visit the gym to focus on lower-body exercises because it has a real impact on my pedalling power,’ says Minnaar.

The occasionally airborne nature of freeriding means that you don’t just use the handlebars to steer. ‘You push and pull on the bars to control your pitch in the air as well as to get your front wheel out of holes in the trail, so your arms and back need to stay strong all the way to the bottom of the run,’ says Minnaar.

Do the first four exercises to build your cycling strength endurance and ability to stabilize your weight on the bike. And make sure that you do the warm-up before you tackle that descent.

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