Sep 2, 2026 · 22 min · 9 segments
The MTB Pain Cave is real! We’re sharing mountain bike climbing tips for managing the mental and physical fatigue that hits during max-effort MTB climbs, tough trails, and steep mountains - when your…
And with that high stoke and high vibe, today we are going to be talking about the pain cave.
Change.
In mountain biking, what
do we mean by the pain cave when we're mountain biking? Struggle bus, right? It's like it's at that moment that you hit and you're just like, what am I doing? It's like, what? Is this worth it? And it usually happens when you're like, I got to get to this downhill.
This downhill is going to be amazing, but I got this like – crappy climb or this crappy section of trail that i have to get through you know because it's not always a climb you know sometimes it's like a a really tough rock garden that requires a tremendous amount of effort you know it just usually happens on a climb but man what do you do when you get to that you know what
do you do Yeah.
You are at your max and you're breathing as hard as you can breathe.
Your muscles are pushing as hard as they can go.
And your brain is yelling at you to stop pedaling.
This hurts too much.
Stop.
And you want to get to the top of the hill and you don't want to stop and you keep going.
How do we keep going when our brain says this hurts, but it's good for us, right? Being able to push past these limits, it's good for us.
It's good for us mentally and physically to be able to push and expand, right? So- We have very, very different experiences of training in the pain cave.
We have very similar experiences of riding trails in the pain cave.
Everyone has the same experience, right? And that's where we train so that when we get to the trail and we get to that climb, that we can push ourselves to our max.
Everyone knows the feeling of getting to the top of that climb where you didn't think you could do it.
And maybe you looked at it three or four times or five times or a hundred times.
And you thought there's no way I can, I can get up that.
And then you start to get closer and closer and you're like, wait a second, I can get there.
And it's that, it's that push.
So.
Yeah.
I mean, dude, that, that mind.
And with that high stoke and high vibe, today we are going to be talking about the pain cave.
Change.
In mountain biking, what
do we mean by the pain cave when we're mountain biking? Struggle bus, right? It's like it's at that moment that you hit and you're just like, what am I doing? It's like, what? Is this worth it? And it usually happens when you're like, I got to get to this downhill.
This downhill is going to be amazing, but I got this like – crappy climb or this crappy section of trail that i have to get through you know because it's not always a climb you know sometimes it's like a a really tough rock garden that requires a tremendous amount of effort you know it just usually happens on a climb but man what do you do when you get to that you know what
do you do Yeah.
You are at your max and you're breathing as hard as you can breathe.
Your muscles are pushing as hard as they can go.
And your brain is yelling at you to stop pedaling.
This hurts too much.
Stop.
And you want to get to the top of the hill and you don't want to stop and you keep going.
How do we keep going when our brain says this hurts, but it's good for us, right? Being able to push past these limits, it's good for us.
It's good for us mentally and physically to be able to push and expand, right? So- We have very, very different experiences of training in the pain cave.
We have very similar experiences of riding trails in the pain cave.
Everyone has the same experience, right? And that's where we train so that when we get to the trail and we get to that climb, that we can push ourselves to our max.
Everyone knows the feeling of getting to the top of that climb where you didn't think you could do it.
And maybe you looked at it three or four times or five times or a hundred times.
And you thought there's no way I can, I can get up that.
And then you start to get closer and closer and you're like, wait a second, I can get there.
And it's that, it's that push.
So.
Yeah.
I mean, dude, that, that mind.
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