Mother Nature’s 2009 TOC Fit Means it is Time to Talk Fitness (guest post)

Instead of watching the boys ride their bikes up Tunitas Creek Rd, Mother Nature has forced me indoors to cook up my next workout. Being that is still February, it will be rooted in single leg movements to continue to increase my hip stability. This will be the ticket to laying down a lot more power in the saddle this season.

This is one of the largest factors to success on the bike for a lot riders: lack of joint stability. Since your body can only produce the amount of power your joint stability allows, you are firing a canon from a canoe if you don’t work on this, YEAR ROUND. I won’t get into the fact that power meters don’t actually measure power, they really measure hip stability because that is a long one!

Most riders engage in body builder type muscle isolation programs, which is great if you are building bulk to flex on stage, but not beneficial if you are trying to improve the way your body is actually designed to move: as an integrated unit in a 3-dimensional environment. Especially since endurance athletes produce ALL of their power from a single leg platform.

I’ve always found it funny how cycling strength workouts look just like old school body builder routines: sit down and press, sit down and curl, sit down and extend. Since riding a bike takes place in a supported seated environment in only one plane of motion (just like these exercises do), it is critical to do “anti-cycling” workouts that open up the hips and get you working while you stand up on a single leg.INTEGRATE Performance Fitness in the last year and a half. Out of that population, it is safe to say over 50% of them lacked the proper muscle firing sequences to take full advantage of their hips when they ride (not too mention causing joint pain of every variety). This drastically impacts your ability to sprint, climb and ride at tempo.

We have seen 100’s of riders at

Most of the time it is because the hip flexors and quads are too tight, and the glutes and lower abdomen are too weak. This can come from sitting down for long periods of time, or not addressing these issues off the bike.

This causes performance robbing muscle imbalances that WILL lessen your enjoyment of riding your bike. Not too mention what they do to your balance. Fortunately, a functional strength training program will prevent as well as correct this.

Up next week: Where muscle imbalances come from and the most effective strategies on how to prevent them.

Leave a reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

CAPTCHA Code (required)