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Bike Shops and Bike Folks
Posted on May 26th, 2010 No commentsMany of you have likely shared the experience of walking into a shop and having someone treat you like crap because you don’t fit into their idea of a worthy customer or cyclist or you just aren’t necessarily into spending a bunch of money for stuff you don’t want. Some of you may have even ranted and raved about it to other folks, I’ve certainly heard it. I’ve had the experience with a few shops around here but have also been lucky enough to find a couple where people actually seem excited to perform a service for you in exchange for money, or perhaps hand over a piece of merchandise for the same.
So I just thought it worth mentioning that this morning I sent an email to just to make sure they didn’t mind if I used a picture of their 58mm Carbon Clinchers on my blog as I talked about the process of picking a wheelset. I always figure that folks don’t mind if you are giving them free advertising, but I often check to make sure.
I got an email not fifteen minutes later from Keith Williams, the president and founder. He said go right ahead with using the image and he also let me know that they are coming out with a different product soon that I might be interested in as well.
Obviously it is in his interest to share information about his products and likely to get pictures of and favorable descriptions of his products in as many places as possible. But I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised at someone taking the time to answer an email (just sent to the info@ address on their website) and it made me think that much more positively about the company.
So there’s hope out there yet that even if you aren’t a super star, or even that serious of a bike rider, that people who make really great stuff for bikes will still take you seriously!
Chapeau to you Mr. Williams. And here’s to me someday rolling a pair of your sweet, sweet wheels really quickly down the road!
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Mother Nature’s 2009 TOC Fit Means it is Time to Talk Fitness (guest post)
Posted on February 28th, 2009 1 commentInstead 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 causi
ng 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.
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