How-To: Train the Most Important Core Muscles for Cycling
Don’t let a weak core frustrate all the hard work your legs do on the bike. Here’s how to make those important trunk muscles strong.
Core Strength Matters
Your bulging quads and razor-cut calves are the envy of your cycling pack, and you start every ride strong. As the ride progresses, though, your hips seesaw in the saddle, your lower back aches, and you slow in corners. The problem? Your core cries uncle long before your legs wear out. Although a cyclist’s legs provide the most tangible source of power, the core muscles—abs and lower back—are the vital foundation from which all movement, including the pedal stroke, stems.
“You can have all the leg strength in the world, but without a stable core you won’t be able to use it efficiently,” says Graeme Street, founder of Cyclo-CORE, a DVD-based training program, and a personal trainer in Essex, Connecticut. “It’s like having the body of a Ferrari with a Fiat chassis underneath.”
What’s more, a solid core will help eliminate unnecessary upper-body movement, so that all the energy you produce is delivered into a smooth pedal stroke.
Sadly, cycling’s tripod position, in which the saddle, pedals, and handlebar support your weight, relies on core strength but doesn’t build it. To develop your high-performance chassis, try this intense routine, designed by Street. It takes only about 10 minutes to complete and focuses on the transverse abdominus, the innermost abdominal muscle, which acts as a stabilizing girdle around your torso, and also on your lower back, obliques, glutes, hamstrings and hip flexors, so your entire core—and then some—becomes strong and works as a unit. You’ll notice that it skips the rectus abdominus, or six-pack muscle, because, says Street, “it’s the least-functional muscle for cycling.”
Do this intense routine, in this order, three times a week to create a core that lets you ride faster, longer, more powerfully—and finish stronger than ever.
1. Boxer Ball Crunch
What It Works: Transverse abdominus, obliques, lower back
Lie with the middle of your back on a stability ball, your knees bent 90 degrees and your feet flat on the floor. Place your hands behind your head, but don’t pull on your neck.
Squeezing your belly button toward your spine, lift your upper back off the ball. Keeping your shoulders off the ball, trace a clockwise oval with your torso. Apply pressure with your lower back to keep the ball still through the entire motion. After 15 clockwise ovals, trace 15 counterclockwise.
Why It Works: Despite the straightforward motion of the bike, your body moves in three directions: forward as you head down the road, vertically as your legs pedal up and down, and laterally as your hips and upper body rock side to side. “This fluid, circular exercise builds control,” says Street, and that helps you minimize lateral torsion and wasted motion.
2. Power Bridge
What It Works: Hip flexors, glutes, lower back
Lying on your back, bend your knees and place your heels near your glutes. Arms are at your sides, palms down.
In one smooth motion, squeeze your glutes, raise your hips off the floor and push up from your heels to form a straight line from shoulders to knees; toes come off the floor slightly. Hold for two seconds. Keeping your toes raised, lower yourself three-quarters of the way to complete one rep. Do 20 repetitions.
Why It Works: In addition to stretching the hip flexors, often extremely stiff in cyclists, the bridge strengthens the link between your lower back and glutes.
3. Hip Extension
What It Works: Lower back, hamstrings, glutes
Lying with your hips and stomach on the stability ball, put your hands on the floor directly under your shoulders, and extend your legs with toes resting on the floor.
With a straight spine and shoulder blades back, as if you’re trying to make them touch, lift both legs off the floor, keeping them straight. If possible, raise them slightly higher than parallel to the floor. Hold for two seconds and lower.
Do 20 reps.
Why It Works: This movement builds backside strength, for added efficiency on the second half of the pedal stroke.
4. Plank
What It Works: Transverse abdominus, upper and lower back
Lying on your stomach, place your elbows under your shoulders with forearms and hands on the floor.
Lift your hips off the floor, keeping your back straight and abs tight, and rest on your toes. Aim for 60 seconds.
Why It Works: The plank builds the strength and muscular endurance you need to ride powerfully in the drops or in an aero position long after others have surrendered to the top of the handlebar.
5. Transverse Plank
What It Works: Transverse abdominus and obliques
Lie on your right side, with your right elbow under your shoulder, forearm in front for stability, and stack your left foot on your right. Raise your left arm over your head.
In one motion, lift your hips to create a straight line down your left side. Lower your hips a few inches off the floor; do 10 to 15 reps, then switch sides.
Why It Works: Strong obliques improve your stability in the saddle, letting you take on hairpin corners with more control and speed.
6. Scissors Kick
What It Works: Transverse abdominus, hip flexors, inner and outer thighs
Lying on your back with legs straight, place both hands palms down under your lower back.
Pushing your elbows down into the floor and pulling your belly button toward your spine, raise your shoulders off the floor and look toward the ceiling. Raise your legs 4 inches off the ground and scissor them: left leg over right, then right over left. That’s one rep. Work up to 100.
Why It Works: A comprehensive movement that connects key cycling muscles, the kick also builds inner-thigh muscles, which help you achieve hip, knee and forefoot alignment for a proper and efficient pedal stroke.
7. Catapult
What It Works: Entire core
Sitting with a slight bend in your knees, press your heels against the floor. Extend arms to the front at shoulder height, palms facing each other.
With a straight spine and upward gaze, inhale deeply, then exhale and slowly lower your torso to the floor over five counts as you inhale. Arms are overhead.
In one smooth movement, leading with the arms, exhale and explode back to the starting position. Do 20 reps.
Why It Works: Contrary to its name, the catapult encourages supreme body control.
8. Boat Pose
What It Works: Transverse abdominus, lower back
Sit, resting both hands lightly behind you, and lean back until your torso is at a 45-degree angle.
Keeping your legs together, lift them off the floor as you extend arms forward at shoulder height. Abs are tight, as thighs and torso form a 90-degree angle. If your hamstrings are tight, you’ll need to bend your knees a little. Work up to holding for 60 seconds.
Why It Works: As with the plank, this pose builds the lower-back stability and core strength needed to remain bent over the handlebar for hours, or to blast up hills without compromising power or speed.
5 Reasons Riding a Bike Is The Most Humiliating Exercise
One of my favorite articles to share with “newby’s” because it will make you laugh until you cry…
By Christina H.
A lot of people don’t find bike riding very impressive as a sport, because how hard can it be? Little kids learn how to ride bikes before they learn how to tie their shoes (which is a little dangerous if you think about it).
Well, I started riding to get in shape recently and learned that there’s a big difference between bike riding and serious bike riding. Doing all the things “right” according to the pros seems at times like a terrible initiation prank designed to kill or embarrass new riders. I can only conclude that there are a limited number of slots in the Real Bicyclists Club and they are dedicated to keeping applicants out by making them deal with things like this…
5
You Can Kill Yourself Just Getting On (if You Do it Right)
Sit on your bike seat. Can you put one foot down on the ground? YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. That’s what they told me anyway.
Common sense tells you that when you come to a stop on your bike, you want to be able to quickly put a foot down so you don’t, you know, fall over.
But apparently that’s crazy talk. You’re actually supposed to be able to fully extend your leg when the pedal is all the way down, to get full use of your leg muscles, because pedaling with your knees always bent is like duck-walking a footrace — you’re not fully using your muscles, and the other racers will laugh heartily at you.
And if you get on the normal way, swinging your leg over the seat with the bike tilted toward you, and then lean upright to get underway, well, a road bike in particular is liable to turn as you get on, because it’s sensitive, and you steer by leaning left and right. So you can find yourself turning into traffic, or maybe the curb, which never turns out well.
So how are you supposed to get off and on? Well, you’re supposed to straddle the crossbar, then put one foot on one of the pedals, and push the bike forward, picking up your other foot, like you’re on a scooter. You’re supposed to go from ground to scooter position to sitting on the seat, to get on, and the opposite to get off, which is easy to do with a bit of practice, but who the hell is going to remember an orderly series of steps 1-2-3 when you’re about to ride into an obstacle and you hit the brakes?
Not me! I prefer an unexpected crotch full of crossbar apparently.
4
Your Feet are Stuck to the Bike
What if people are too wily to fall off their bikes just because you raised their seats? Well, the cycling community has just the thing to deal with them, toe clips. Clips that hold your feet to the pedals, whether you like it or not.
“What if the rider can’t get their foot off in time because it’s actually fastened to the pedal with something that looks like an S&M torture device?” one of the Real Bicyclist Club members no doubt proposed one day, to resounding applause. And so toe clips were born.
Most serious bicyclists wouldn’t dream of using toe clips, however, and have special clipless pedals that lock onto special cleats on special bike shoes.
They’ll talk like toe clips and cleats are completely different things even though it’s quite obvious to a terrified clumsy person like me that they both attach your feet to the freakin’ pedals.
Of course they’ve come up with an excuse for this, which is efficiency. With a regular bike pedal, you only push down. Strapping your feet in with those deathtraps allows you to also pull the pedals up, giving you extra power, at the cost of immortality. If you’re riding in a group and everyone else has them, you’re liable to get left behind.
I personally don’t care, I’m not attaching my feet to anything. I’ll go lift some freakin’ weights and get 50% stronger than everyone else if that’s what I have to do to keep up. A week doesn’t go by where I don’t hear someone’s horror story about being clipped in and falling over their handlebars and breaking their ankle or seeing their shinbone or something equally charming.
Bonus: The bike shoes you have to wear to attach the cleats often have solid pieces of plastic or carbon fiber as soles, so if you enjoy ice skating across a dry parking lot, you will enjoy these.
3
Embarrassing Ass Products
Anyone who’s ever been on a bike more than five minutes (after puberty) knows that biking makes your ass hurt.
Fortunately they’ve invented entire lines of products to deal with that. Unfortunately these products are somewhat humiliating. The first thing every bicyclist needs is padded bike shorts, with more and more specialized crotch padding over the years:
I’m not the only one who has the vague feeling I’m looking at something obscene here, right? Oh, and you go commando. That disturbingly shaped pad goes right up against your special parts.
All the padding in the world doesn’t do anything about the fact that some of your parts just need space. Nothing can be done for your balls, if you have them, but there are apparently many veins and tubes and nerves both men and women have down there that are very bad to squish.
So to fix that, you can ride on a stupid looking seat with a hole in the middle:
If that’s still not enough (and it won’t be), you’ll need chamois butter (which is a delicate term for “ass cream.”)
They come with oddly appropriate brand names like “Chamois Butt’r,” “Assos” (a general cycling supplier whose name happens to fit this one product surprisingly well), “Udderly SMOOth” and “Bag Balm” brands of ass cream that anyone would be proud to ring up at the counter.
So yeah, if the certainty of falling off your bike doesn’t scare you, junior, why don’t you just lube up your ass, put on some disturbing-looking shorts, and hop up on that donut seat. You see what I mean? They are totally just waiting to see when you will catch on.
2
Impotence
If you’re a man, it gets worse. Not only does the seat feel like it’s destroying your balls, it might actually be destroying your balls. Heavy-duty riding over a long period of time compresses your perineum — also known as the “taint” or “gooch” for people who like to giggle while talking about serious medical problems.
That compresses a vital channel inside your chode, a channel which is actually known to actual doctors as Alcock’s canal. That canal houses a nerve and an artery that allows you to both get boners and put them to use. If you constantly pinch it by riding the Tour de France or something, then you will pitch no more tents.
Researchers estimate this affects 5% of male cyclists who will admit it, plus a larger percentage of male cyclists who are too embarrassed to admit they’ve neutered themselves.
Bike seats exist that are easier on your grundle, and suppliers are constantly inventing more taint-friendly seats, but very few seats are completely innocent of attempting to gradually castrate their riders.
And what about something that both genders are interested in, for different reasons – lady parts? Well, just like with men, biking too much can lead to numbness in a lady’s special area which is certainly not a good thing, but doesn’t seem to cause actual sexual dysfunction. So there’s that.
1
The Clothes Are Designed to Make You Look Stupid
Biking clothes on anybody are like shaved heads on women. If you are really good looking to begin with (Natalie Portman) then you still look good, but not as good as you did before.
If you are not super hot to begin with, you will look like a douche.
If you look at any rack of biking jerseys, it looks like a clown wardrobe. There are a couple of reasons for the bright colors cars almost never look for bicyclists on purpose, so you have to stand out like a sore thumb to be safe.
I’m not sure what the pros’ excuse is, they close the roads off for them.
The other reason for the colors is that due to practical design, all the clothes look pretty much the same they need to be tight to minimize wind resistance and not get caught in things so the only way to stand out as an individual is with offensive color combinations.
As terrified as I am about safety, I still wear a black jersey. If I die, at least I’ll die fashionable and dignified.
Tacky tops aside, bike shorts are terrible in their own way. If you invented a piece of clothing to humiliate people, you could hardly do better. Normal-looking women suddenly look like they have giant T-rex hips, and men get to show everyone their package (before wrecking it on their seat).
Well now that I’ve gone to all the trouble to show that this is clearly some kind of terrible hazing ritual, why on earth am I still biking? After all, I’m a lifelong couch potato and I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of fire, knives, heights, going fast, jellyfish, Taiwanese home cooking, you name it.
I’m still going to avoid most of those things but you can’t spend your life avoiding everything you’re afraid of. I like going outside, getting in shape, seeing beautiful scenery, and if I’m going to let the thought of falling off the bike and being dragged down an asphalt road at 40 miles per hour stop me from enjoying the things I- oh man. I feel kind of faint, I think I need to go lie down.
Actually, one of the reasons I’m riding is to raise money to fight cancer.
Good Friday Also Known AS Holy Friday
Lisa Christiansen's Wealth Of Wisdom 