RELAX, RELAX, RELAX!

What's that? You thought mountain bike racing was a full focus high tension activity? It shouldn’t be. Think of it as a full focus high energy activity. Forget about the tension.
If your hands are sore and different muscles are cramping up after a tough ride, you may need to focus on relaxing more. It would perhaps benefit you to lose that death grip on the handlebars when confronted by challenging technical sections of trail.

Spend one training session a week paying close attention to relaxing all of the unnecessary muscles during intense activity. Bruce Lee, the king of fast movements understood that muscle contractions slow down movements. To move quicker, you have to relax the opposing muscles. He didn't tense up until a split second before hitting an object. That's not to say that none of his muscles were tense, only the necessary ones. He obviously knew what he was talking about since he could knock a much larger person half way across the room with his famous one inch punch. Don't relax your attention. Relax all of the muscles you don't absolutely need for whatever movement you are making. This should result in faster, smoother movements plus conserve a great deal of precious energy.

I really enjoyed William Nealy's MOUNTAIN BIKE. He has a great sense of humor and has developed a step by step approach to overcoming your fears and mastering technical skills.