Time on a bike.  Training on an XC or Road bike, static bike anything on two wheels to gain cardio fitness, as well as time on a DH bike, or a little bike for skills practice.  Most of the top boys ride MX or DJ/4x in their spare time, any time on two wheels will see some improvement

Running and swimming can be used in conjunction with but shouldn't be used instead of time on a bike.

Hooking yourself up with an XC bike will probably be the easiest cardio method.

Rootes

Sorry for the massive plug but if you check out Wideopen issues 5,6 and 7 there's 3 articles from Alan Milway at mxfitness.co.uk with info on DH training.

First one is 'off season' training, next is 'pre-season' training and the last is how to prep the week before and the weekend of a race. Should get really set you up for a years worth of race prep. You can also get loads of good tips at Alan's site (mxfitness.co.uk).

Alan trains Danny Hart and a load of other pro riders so definitely knows his s*it!  That's at www.wideopenmag.co.uk

Jambo's post about the moto-trainer is good too - i got one and they're a great little tool for getting out and pushing yourself to go faster.

sorry again for the plug, just trying to be useful 

A dmc moto timer eh?? never heard of it, but i will for sure check that out right now!

Thanks for the advice, really helps. Much appreciated!

Greg

I suppose there's two parts to going faster in DH, fitness and technical ability. Fitness is the easy one, I'd say riding is the best becuase that's what you want to build up the fitness for... Build up a cheap mtb with rigids and slicks and do some road riding, it doesn't have to be expensive and light becuase the more weight you have to ride around the bigger the benefit of each mile? not too heavy though otherwise hills will just be miserable. I have a GT aggressor with some trailblades, flat bars and 1.5" scwalbe city jets, and LX gearing, guess it weighs 28ish lbs and I ride it lots, over 2600 miles this year so far, 1000 miles on the road bike and I actually want to find a really pedally DH so that I can just crank the whole time

As for technical ability, that's harder, I think the ultimate would be to have a range of DH tracks and a timing system, but that's not really feasable. I just ride a bit of DH every now and then but I'm not the best technical rider, I'd love to have a way of timing myself over a section and just session various parts of tracks to find what actually is the quicker line rather than what feels quicker.

Just checked out the moto timer..... Seems like an ace bit of kit! I think im gonna stick in the card details now.... Off to Cwmcarn this weekend, be nice to get some times for that!

Roo, got given a super old DMR transistion. maybe i should set that up for an XC(ish) ride!?

Guys, thanks allot, nice to get some proper answers!

Greg

It's up to you, I would say it's best to go out for around an hour so if you think you will be comfortable on it for an hour then go ahead, if not it might be better to get something a little larger. This is just my opinion though. You could always build it up snglespeed and and use it for sprinting. I should mention I don't actually do all the riding I do as training for DH, I just do it because I have free time. I rarely race DH!

Let me know how you get on....Full black run including the woods sections 

Rootes