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So, I've been working out pretty hard for the last few months but I'm getting sick of it and my upper body joints are getting sore not to mention the fact that when I workout it takes time and energy away from my mountain biking. If I stop today, how long before I start noticing a decrease in strength and muscle definition?
I primarily train for long, fast hikes, trail running and climbing peaks. So I will do an 8 week or so hypertrophy (armor building for lack of a better term) phase in my off season. Get as strong as I can, put on a few pounds of extra muscle and then do maintenance work the rest of the year. For me kettlebells and bodyweight exercises keep me as strong as I need to be for doing endurance sports.
Now that I'm older I try to take an off week every 4-5 weeks. Cut my workout load in half, catch up on sleep and clean up my diet. Scheduling rest weeks is the key to being able to push it hard the rest of the time.
A lot of it depends on your diet. If you're sick of it,(mentally burned out), then that's sign of overtraining. If your joints are sore you could using too much weight, lifting with bad form, or both.
Often in life we can't have it both ways, for example, someone could not be a bodybuilder and a long distance runner, it would be impossible. If you're trying to build muscle and strength mountain biking is counter productive to that. Plus it could also be why you're overtrained, (based on your symptoms),. Regarding exercise, more is better, better is better.
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As others said, it all depends, however...
In more general terms: you can break your fitness into several components: strength, anaerobic endurance, aerobic endurance, flexibility, technique.
BTW, all those would be applicable to mountain biking (in the actual mountains, not flat terrain)
Now, let's say you stopped training alltogether, but maintain your regular, workout-free lifestyle otherwise.
All those components listed would decay at a different pace.
1. The first to go would be the anaerobic endurance (AE). In case of MB, it would be the ability to do hard, steep climbs for a few minutes or so. AE would noticeably diminish within couple of weeks.
2. Next go go would be the regular endurance - the ability to ride at moderate level for couple of hours or so. I think you'd notice decline within a month or so.
3. The strength would go next. In your case, it would be an all out effort up a super-steep hill for a few seconds, or more typically, lift weights that are close to max. It might last a little longer than regular endurance, maybe couple of months, at levels a bit less than the max, but close to it.
4. Flexibility would be decent for longer than the first 3, but diminish eventually as well.
5. Finally, the technique. Technique is heavily embedded at the neural level, both in the muscles and the brain. Once you acquire it, it often lasts a lifetime. Even if you lose a bit of it, it comes back the fastest.
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