I Love Bicycling

I Love Bicycling is a website that is geared towards cycling for beginners with road cycling tips, training articles, nutrition tips, weight loss, how to’s and bike repair articles.

Injury Prevention

The Best Way to Avoid Cycling Injuries

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“How can you prevent injury while cycling?”

It’s one of the first questions you should be asking as a cyclist. We all want to get faster, stronger and better on the bike, and while there’s definitely tried and true methods to attaining those things, there’s also a guaranteed way to prevent them from happening: Getting injured.

injury while cycling

Being sidelined from the saddle is a cyclist’s worst nightmare. We all know the exercise-induced-junkie-type behaviour that is all too common in ourselves and our fellow riders. We love to ride and we love to ride often. Being “injured” is almost a misnomer for many members of the cycling community, and we’re all too inclined to take a position of out of sight, out of mind. 

But that can only go on for so long. Anybody who has been riding for a while knows that the aches turn into pains if you give them enough time, and because of the repetitive nature of our sport, cycling injuries in general tend to stick around longer than others. 

This calls for action, a plan, something to have in place and fall back on. It’s not a pill, it’s not a tool, and it’s not a quick fix. It’s more of a philosophy, a necessary component. Something you need to build yourself and your cycling practice around. Something that will help you keep your status not just as a cyclist, but as an overall strong, healthy human being. 

One of the best ways to avoid cycling injuries is by implementing a strength, mobility and conditioning program into your training. 

Common Cycling Injuries

Think about it, apart from falls and collisions (which, admittedly, make up a large percentage of cycling injuries), how do we get injured in our sport? There are no rapid changes of direction that blow out our ACL’s. No violent kicks, throws or punches to tear a hip or shoulder. No lifting of heavy loads to herniate a disc…it’s just different from other sports. 

There is one word, though, that could characterize the plight of the average cyclist…

That word, is overuse.

Overuse injuries are the bane of your existence if you are an avid bike rider of any kind. The bike keeps you in a more or less fixed position while riding, which is something the body can adapt to, but only so much. There comes a time where you cross the point of adaptation and creep into the realms of imbalance; a place where lurking, recurring injuries love to dwell. 

Knee pain, neck pain, lower back pain, groin pain, hamstring tightness, headaches, shortness of breath and so much more can all be the result of overworked muscles. Not necessarily just in the area of pain, but somewhere in the chain of the human body’s unbelievably complex web of connectedness.

How do we restore function? How do we get rid of pain? How do we find balance? It is something we have to achieve in our time spent off the bike. 

Strength Training for Cyclists

prevent injury while cycling with strength training

fizkes/Adobe Stock

Exposing your body to exercises that work opposing muscles from the ones you use while cycling are going to help pull joints back into alignment and strengthen the tissues that get neglected through our sport. It is common for cyclists to think that any time off the bike is wasted time, but going back to the beginning of this article, if you end up injured, you might not be spending any time on the bike at all.

Some people fear the idea of strength training because they don’t want to get too bulky, and are afraid it will actually hinder their performance on the bike. Nothing could be further from the truth. Several studies have shown that in both men and women, one of the best things you can do to increase cycling performance is to increase the cross sectional area (size) of your muscles. 

Remember this as well, building muscle is a slow and tedious process. It requires weeks, months and years of consistent week-in-week-out effort. So the idea that you’ll wake up one day and be too bulky to ride efficiently is a myth you should be all too willing to dispose of.

What Should My Program Consist Of? 

Dedicating time to bringing harmony back into your body is the only way to counter everything we put ourselves through on the bike. A strength training program isn’t all about lifting heavy weights, there are several other components as well to ensure it remains balanced and complimentary to your body and the sport of cycling. 

We can not only increase our strength, but our endurance as well. The higher our fitness level the less likely it is that our form will break down while riding, which can lead to our muscles being used improperly and adding significant stress to our joints.

We can also work on our mobility and flexibility to help keep tissues supple and vascular. Too much cycling activity can really start to limit our ranges of motion due to its relatively minimal amount of movement. The pedal stroke doesn’t take our hip or knee through a full range, and the rest of our body doesn’t move that much at all. Resultant stiffness can lead to constriction, which means less blood flow and nutrients delivered to the area, and an increased risk of injury.

How Do I Start? 

Starting to exercise off the bike can be the most intimidating part of the process. We’re taking you away from what’s familiar and plunging you into a whole other world that applies to not just cycling, but every other sport and activity that there is. Sometimes the best thing to do is hire a professional, but coaching costs can be discouraging. That’s why we decided to come up with something better…

Dynamic Cyclist is our partnered training platform designed by cyclists, for cyclists. We’ve integrated mobility, conditioning and strength training into one, easy to use, 100% online user interface that our members can use 24/7 to fit their schedules. There’s no need for a gym membership, because all of our routines can be done at home with little to no equipment!

Everything has been prepared for you with high quality instructional videos led by world class coaches. All you need to do is press play and follow along!
For a fraction of the cost of a single physio appointment or personal trainer session, you can become part of our community of cyclists who want to ride pain free and be the best version of themselves on and off the bike. Try it for yourself by signing up for our 7-day free trial!

What Muscles Does Cycling Work?

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It can be hard to discern just through sensation what muscles we actually used during a ride, and you might find yourself wondering what was really accomplished in terms of muscular activity. What muscles does cycling work? Some people say their lungs are working, but the lungs aren’t a muscle. It’s obvious our legs are working, but the leg is a big thing with many parts. Which of them are doing what? How? And at what time when we’re on the bike? 

The science of cycling is unique in several ways because our sport is quite different than most. There’s those sports where you operate on your own two feet, and others (like cycling, rowing and kayaking) that support and move you in a seated position.

Today we want to tell you, and give you a brief overview of the different muscles you use while cycling. Some are far bigger contributors to your cycling performance than others, and some are just completely misunderstood. So let’s start with busting a major myth right off the bat. The idea that cycling builds big glutes.

Source: Rattanasak/Adobe Stock

Glutes

Unfortunately, it does not. Not to any great degree anyways. If you’re cycling to lift things up, make them more round and so on – you’re going to be quite disappointed. That is unless you’re coming from a place of very low fitness and activity (i.e. cycling is your first real form of exercise), in which case you will likely notice a difference, but only the same difference you would notice if starting any form of exercise.

If you’re relatively fit with a healthy body composition, the sport of cycling just doesn’t stimulate the gluteus maximus (your butt) enough for any real development. The gluteus maximus is the body’s primary hip extensor, it’s strong and big, and responds to intense, powerful hip extension like you see in a person sprinting or coming out of the bottom of a full depth squat.

The reason cycling negates its use is due to the range of motion your hip goes through while on the bike. If the hip doesn’t go past a certain degree of flexion, your body will not use the gluteus maximus to extend it. It’s too expensive, and the body is an energy conservation machine. It will instead resort to your secondary hip extensors, which are the hamstrings.

Electromyography analysis of the lower extremity during pedaling. What muscles does cycling work

Source: Electromyographic Analysis of the Lower Extremity during Pedaling

Hamstrings

The graph above details this situation perfectly. This study placed individuals on a bicycle ergometer and had them pedal against changes in workload, pedal rates and other variables in seated and standing positions. The graph shows measures in electrical activity of different muscle groups throughout the test. Notice the difference between gluteus maximus and biceps femoris (your outer hamstring).

Your hamstrings have a primary function of flexing the knee, and a secondary function of extending the hip. When circumstances ask for hip extension, but the intensity requirement of that extension is low, your body resorts to a principle called synergistic dominance. This principle states that when a prime mover is inhibited (gluteus maximus), your body will use secondary movers (biceps femoris) to save energy and properly perform the function.

Conclusively, the hamstrings are far more responsible for hip extension while cycling than the glutes. On every downstroke your hamstrings are working to extend the hip down. Further, they also use their knee flexing function to start the upstroke. All of this work presents itself in the hamstring stiffness often seen globally among cyclists.

Woman holding a bridge pose

Source: fizkes/Adobe Stock

Quadriceps

Let’s move on to the real workhorse muscles used while cycling, the quadriceps. Particularly the rectus femoris, also seen in the electromyography graph above. There is extreme and vigorous activity of the quadriceps on every pedal downstroke you perform. That’s because the range of the movement and your ability to produce force is operated primarily via your ability to extend the knee, which is, you guessed it, the main function of your quads.

Particularly when standing on the bike you are going to get more of a pump in your thighs due to the fact that you’re contracting them with the addition of a huge percentage of your bodyweight that would otherwise be supported by the saddle. The quadriceps are big, powerful muscles and that burning feeling you get climbing a hill or doing a sprint is because of the lactic acid that gets accumulated as a result of all their contractions.

Knee pain, IT band tightness and even hamstring injuries can be the result of overworked, stiff quadriceps muscles. Using foam rolling, mobility and stretching exercises to help release some of the tension they’re liable to hold on a cyclist can do a lot to increase blood flow and allow other muscles to do their jobs properly while riding. 

Lower Leg Muscles

The all too forgotten muscles of the lower leg serve important roles while cycling. If they’re thought of at all we tend to only focus on the back of the lower leg, your gastrocnemius and soleus (calf muscles). These muscles work to flex the foot or point the toes down, which is a huge part of transitioning through the bottom of your pedal stroke.

It may surprise you to learn that there is also a whole other side to your lower leg! The tibialis anterior is a large muscle that runs along the front outer part of your shin with its tendons actually wrapping down into the arch of your foot. It’s responsible for picking your foot off the ground and lifting your toes. Which happens every time you transition to the upstroke and is accentuated drastically through the use of cycling shoes.

Cyclists with achilles tendon problems, knee issues and foot pain often have dysfunction somewhere in the lower leg muscles as well. We can mitigate a lot of those problems, however, by ensuring our lower legs are strong, supple and getting some focused attention in our training programs. 

A group of cyclists lower body pedaling

Source: pavel1964/Adobe Stock

Hip Flexors

Especially if you’re wearing cycling shoes, the hip flexors (primarily the psoas muscle) can help produce a more powerful upstroke while pedaling. Their function is in the name, hip flexion, but that’s not all they do. Because of their attachment to all five lumbar vertebrae, they are major stabilizers of the lower back.

Low back pain is one of the most common complaints amongst cyclists at all ages and skill levels. A good chunk of that responsibility has to fall on your poor psoas muscle, which can really get crushed if you’re putting in long hours on the bike. This is because the hip is always in a semi-flexed position, which for the psoas means a semi-shortened position.

If you constantly put a muscle in a shortened position you’re basically teaching it to stay there, and by chronically shortening a muscle it will eventually start to lose sarcomeres (base units of muscle), becoming permanently shorter. We want to avoid this at all costs, and implement stretching and mobility measures to return the psoas to its normal range.

Strengthen the Muscles Used in Biking

Our partner, Dynamic Cyclist, has intelligently designed programs to address all the stiffness, injury and common muscle weaknesses seen in cyclists! They have hundreds of follow along video routines that have been organized into balanced training programs for you to try, all for a low monthly cost! See for yourself by signing up for a 7-day free trial!

Here Are 5 Tips To Correct Your Cycling Posture

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As cyclists, we want to be economical and good cycling posture plays a significant role in doing this. Because of the countless hours we end up sitting on our bikes, it would be wise to figure out how best we can achieve efficiency in order to avoid damage to our bodies and improve overall cycling performance.

The question here is: How can we improve cycling posture? 

To become better at something, you need to become more efficient. The truth(s) we are actually seeking is how do we get better on the bike? How do we avoid overuse injuries? And how do we get more for less while cycling? 


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A great question can sometimes be answered with an equation – and one for efficiency already exists. Borrowed from physics, it reads as follows

Efficiency = Output/Input

In cycling terms: Greater output (cycling performance) divided by lesser input (work done on the bike & wind resistance) will equal more efficient cycling.

One way to lessen the input is by improving posture.

Cycling Posture

After you’ve had a professional bike fit done to reduce hot spots and accommodate your unique proportions, the next thing to address will be your posture. The reason is because using the wrong postures at the wrong times (or just doing them poorly) while riding can make you a far less efficient cyclist…

Increased wind resistance, bleeding force, overloaded joints and overworked muscles are just some of the damage we do to ourselves and our biking when posture gets compromised. You end up putting in more work (higher input) for less reward (lower output), opposite of the desired variables in our formula above.

Today we want to give you 5 tips to improve your cycling posture so you not only feel better on the bike, but also increase your longevity, lower your injury risk, breathe better and enjoy yourself more – even on tough rides. 

#1. Adjust Your Hand Position

There are three hand positions that you’re going to use throughout your ride, and it’s important you use the right one at the right time. They each have significant influence over how the rest of your body will be positioned, all with their own advantages, disadvantages and specific use:

cycling posture

Tops

You should be using your tops when you’re at the front of the group, riding alone or climbing a hill. This allows you to be in a more upright position where you can take in deeper breaths, have a better view of the road, pedal hard and be overall more comfortable on the bike.

Hoods

This is where you’ll be the majority of the time, think of it as a maintenance position for when you’re cruising on flat terrain and maintaining a steady cadence. This is a good position to relax into and conserve energy with easy access to your shifters or brakes should you need them.

Drops

Your most aggressive position and ideal for descending down hills as it lowers your center of gravity. You’ll naturally be able to shift your weight back and literally “drop” into a more aerodynamic position; increased output (speed/distance) and lowered input (pedaling/wind).

#2. Remember To Breathe

Not getting enough oxygen in is going to force your body to compensate through your posture. You’ll start to crane your neck, your breathing will get erratic and exaggerated, your lower back will arch, and basically everything will fall apart. Breathing is not something you can mess with on a human being without some sort of consequence.

There’s a couple of ways to address this, number one is to improve your strength and conditioning so that the stimulus of cycling isn’t so stressful on your body. The better shape you’re in, the more calm you’ll be on the bike. You can learn to modulate when your body breathes deeply for recovery and when it should really push for a sprint or hill climb. 

Number two, maintain good posture even when you’re at the limits of your fitness. “Fake it until you make it”, in a sense. The reason is because you want to send the signal to your brain that you’re in control. Try your best to harmonize yourself with the stress, and you’ll recover faster when you hit flat ground or return to a more steady pedal rate. Keep it together!

#3. Engage Your Core

Maintaining some degree of stiffness in your core is going to help support your back (keeping it from collapsing) and give your legs something solid to push off of. The lower extremity is connected to your torso through the hip flexors, and pushes/pulls on the pedals in concert with the contraction of your core muscles in the front and back of your body.

Especially as you drop into a more folded position, it’s important to keep your tail slightly tucked (pelvis rotated back) to keep your core engaged. This will increase the power output from your legs, and also disperse the load more evenly throughout your body. 

Remember that any break in the kinetic chain (combined muscle activity to perform a movement) will cause force to bleed out and be wasted. For many people, this is the core, and it presents itself as an arched lower back on the bike or abnormal movement patterns that don’t look or feel natural.

#4. Relax Your Body

Too much tension on the other hand, is also going to affect the way you look and move on the bike. While the goal is to produce force, pedal hard and cycle fast while riding, we also need to be able to adapt, stay loose and complete the distance we’re setting out to do. 

Put that chattering voice in your head to work by giving yourself reminders throughout the ride. Relax the shoulders and bring them down from the ears. Soften the elbows so they can act as your built-in natural shock absorbers. Unclench the jaw and relax your face. Loosen the grip and use only as much muscle as you need.

Bodybuilders know the effects of this all too well – they commonly report extreme muscle soreness and fatigue after doing a posing routine on stage. All their energy goes into those poses, but it doesn’t need to go into ours. Learn to catch yourself wasting unnecessary energy and gain it back through small reminders to relax.


Pattadis/Adobe Stock

#5. Control Your Exertion

Bursting too hard out of the blocks is a common problem among many types of athletes. In our sport, it can have some seriously negative effects on your cycling posture. If you overexert yourself too soon and use up all your reserves, you might not have the capacity to recover, and form will just slowly break down further and further as the ride goes on.

A proper warm up can really help mitigate this problem. It gives you the time to get yourself in a good headspace, go through the race or training plan in your mind, and figure out how best to approach the peaks and valleys of this session. 

If you can stay relaxed in the right places, you’ll be able to fine tune the juxtaposition between your periods of recovery and moments of intense exertion (sprint, hill climb, attack, finish). This helps maintain overall composure, resulting in better race outcomes and training results over time.

Ride Pain & Injury Free For LIFE

If you’re looking for an all-inclusive training platform available to you 24/7 for a low monthly cost – check out, Dynamic Cyclist. They offer daily stretching and strength training video routines designed specifically for cyclists. Created by industry professionals, these programs will take your cycling to the next level and help you reach your full potential. So, whether you’re a beginner or an experienced rider, Dynamic Cyclist has everything you need to improve your performance and keep riding for years to come. Experience the results for yourself. You can try it for FREE by signing up HERE!.

Lower Back Pain & Cycling: The Ultimate Guide

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Introduction


More than half of cyclists report having low back pain, which should be reason enough for you to read through this article. Either you are one of these individuals, or in all likelihood will be at some point in your cycling career. Unfortunately, there are various things about our sport that almost guarantee an achy back with enough time and patience. 

If we are the ones to break this news to you, we apologize. But just the singular act of sitting on a bike can actually have serious detrimental implications for your lower back.

Today we will give you the information and guidance to eliminate cycling low back pain once and for all. A note before we dive in, ensure you have done (or have had a professional perform) a proper bike fit. Without this, all the following advice could be a non-starter. If that’s in order, then we hope you find this helpful. Here is a comprehensive guide to some of the most common issues relating to lower back pain in cyclists, and most importantly, how to address them.

Compression (Problems)

A famous study from 1970 showed that while standing you have (on average) about 100 kg of pressure on your lumbar discs. If you sit down, this pressure increases to 140 kg. If you bend forward while sitting, this pressure increases to 185 kg. 

Remind you of anything?


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Constant compression of your spinal discs not only puts you at risk for disc herniation, it is often the cause of weakness, numbness, tingling and pain that can radiate out from the back and into your limbs through conditions like sciatica. This might help explain why some people experience back pain after cycling, resulting from the increased compressive forces sustained during the ride.

Many people think back pain originates from things like hard physical labour, but the evidence says otherwise. There is a far higher percentage of people with back pain in rich, developed countries where people are more sedentary. The same phenomenon is seen when comparing people in urban centers to others in rural communities. A lot of this comes down to sitting. 

There is a devilish trick at play here, because people think getting on their bike is going to make them stronger, more resilient and LESS susceptible to common problems like low back pain. As we’re starting to see, this is not exactly true. So we need to find ways to counteract the compression we experience on our bikes, and in so many other areas of our lives.

Compression (Fixes)

You may have heard the interesting fact that you’re taller in the morning than you are at night. This is a result of gravity acting down on you throughout the day. As we age, the repetitiveness of this effect on our spinal columns (among other things) can actually cause our spinal discs to lose fluid, dry out, become brittle, painful and injured. 

There are however ways to give our spines the love they need, and preserve their integrity throughout our lives. That is by actively taking them through full ranges of motion, and doing exercises to neutralize the excessive compression forces we subject them to. Here are two things to help that you’re probably not currently doing:

Hanging


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Our ancestors have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years, children do it on the playground, but for some reason as adults we don’t do it at all. You don’t need an inversion table, fancy boots or medieval torture devices to decompress your spine…all you need to do is hold onto a bar – and relax.

Hanging has a number of incredible benefits. It expresses full shoulder flexion, increases grip strength and decompresses your spine to name a few. A door frame pull up bar is inexpensive and easy to use. Try doing intermittent sets throughout the day to help loosen things up, especially after rides. 

If you’re not strong enough to hold yourself, or can only hold for a few seconds, use your feet on a platform or the floor to take some of the weight off.  It’s important to give yourself time to gradually get stronger in this position. Our modern lifestyles and the sport of cycling rarely take our arms overhead. So take your time, start slow and don’t rush.

Full Squats (Resting)


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Remember those lower income countries we mentioned? Their citizens often do something far better than sitting when eating meals, waiting for the bus or even just talking to friends. It’s the same thing every child does when they want to pick something up off the ground. Most of us know it as an exercise, but it’s actually fundamentally a resting position. The squat.

Sitting in a full squat is a natural position for our bodies; it helps us digest food, keeps our hips, knees and ankles mobile, and actually places our colons in the best position to poop (pooping in the woods, anyone?) It also has a gentle stretching and decompressive effect on our lower backs, with the force going through our feet and the ground instead of our backsides and a saddle.

This might be hard if you’re inexperienced, but you can use your desk or any other sturdy implement to hold onto while in this position. Placing a book under each heel can help as well. Try spending short periods of time down there, and you’ll be shocked at how mobile, supple and energetic you start to become. After the initial period of incredible discomfort, of course!

Core (Problems)

The core is grossly misunderstood, especially when it comes to cycling and lower back pain. Lower back pain is strongly associated with a muscle called the Transversus Abdominis (TVA), your deepest abdominal muscle. It wraps around your organs and entire midsection like a corset, and is your body’s equivalent to the weight belts you see people wearing in gyms.


The Role of the Pelvic Floor in Respiration: A Multidisciplinary Literature Review – Scientific Figure on ResearchGate

As you can see from this photo, the TVA shares an intimate relationship with your diaphragm, multifidus and pelvic floor muscles. All of them work together in a loop to create trunk and low back stability. One of the most notable differentiators between cyclists with back pain is that they have less TVA thickness than riders without low back pain.

When you activate your TVA, your belly button draws in towards your spine. This pushes your organs up against your diaphragm and down against your pelvic floor, creating a compressed cylinder around your low back. Because the tendons of your diaphragm reach down towards the L2/L3 vertebrae, the upwards pressure of this action actually lifts those vertebrae slightly, decompressing L4/L5 and L5/S1 below. 

L4/L5 and L5/S1 just so happen to be the two most common sites for disc herniations, and TVA weakness will almost undoubtedly be found in individuals with those injuries. 

Starting to see the importance of proper core function?

Core (Fixes)

Having a stronger, more supported core should start with learning how to use your TVA (as opposed to hammering your abdominals with excessive exercise, which is so often the advice given). This will increase the tone of your midsection and support your organs, while also adding support to the lower back even in the compromised position your bike puts you in. 

So, how do you do it?

Think about putting on a tight pair of pants, you know how you suck your belly button in to do so? That’s the action of your TVA. To practice, try taking in a deep breath of air. Now slowly exhale, and at the same time draw your belly button in towards your spine. The TVA assists in expiration, so timing these two actions together can help increase awareness of the muscle.


Adobe Stock

Every time you bend over, pick something up, push/pull something or MOVE at all – you should be activating your TVA first. Take a breath, draw the belly in and hold. Complete the movement, then repeat. Remember, if your TVA is engaged, your back is supported. With enough practice, your nervous system will learn to automatically activate it every time you move.

“Does this mean you should hold your tummy in all day and the whole time you’re cycling?”

Of course not! But by strengthening this muscle through regular use you will increase its resting tone. So even when not actively engaging it (like when you’re riding) it will be tight, strong and supportive. 


Poor resting abdominal tone versus good resting abdominal tone. Neither of these people are overweight, but the man’s belly is protruding because his organs are falling forward against a weak abdominal wall. 

Hips (Problems)

We now get to one of the most problematic areas in the body when it comes to low back pain and cycling, the hips. More specifically, the hip flexors. Even more specifically, the psoas muscle. The psoas is your primary hip flexor, and is indeed the only muscle connecting your upper and lower body. 

It attaches to your femur and all five lumbar vertebrae, so it has significant influence on your lower back. While cycling, your hips are always in some state of flexion, never reaching full extension. The hip flexors actually help pull your leg up through the recovery phase in preparation for propulsion in the power phase, as well. All this flexion can lead to tightness.

Tight psoas muscles will pull on the lumbar vertebrae. This tips the pelvis forward by creating an excessive curve in the low back (lordosis), causing the vertebrae to pinch together, compressing nerves and often resulting in pain. Tight hips also inhibit the function of their antagonists, the glutes, which are tremendously important for overall strength and balance in the body.


PhysioLogic

Hips (Fixes)

Static stretching in general can be a great way to improve flexibility. Doing it before riding however, is not necessarily recommended. When you hold stretches for extended periods of time, it has a relaxation effect on the muscles by decreasing their neural excitation, meaning they won’t be able to contract as hard as usual, leading to decreased cycling performance.

We can intelligently use this effect to our benefit, though. If we want to decrease the activity of a hyperactive muscle, such as our hip flexors, then doing a passive stretch on them before, and even intermittently during, our rides can be a handy tool for relieving back pain while cycling. 

Give this stretch a try before your next session:

Lunge Stretch


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Get into a wide standing lunge position, try not to arch your lower back (tuck your tail), and then lean into your front knee, opening up the hip on your extended side. You should feel a stretch in the front of that back hip. Hold for 30-60 seconds. Repeat on the other side. If this is too tiring, you can lower the back knee to the ground for support. 

This will have a “deadening” effect on your hip flexors and possibly provide some relief to the low back while riding. If you get some initial relief, and then feel your lower back pulling after some time riding, simply stop and perform this stretch again to see if it makes a difference. If it does, then you can start doing this stretch on rest days for a more permanent effect.

Back Strength (Problems)

Cycling basically does nothing in the way of strengthening your back, but paradoxically, you need a strong back to be a good cyclist. Being bent over on the bike forces our back muscles to work extremely hard to maintain some sort of rigidity and stability during that time, but if we lack the endurance to do so, the body resorts to other mechanisms.

There is something that takes place in your body called the flexion-relaxation phenomenon. When you sub-maximally flex your spine, your body will relax the muscles of the back to rely passively on deeper structures like tendons and ligaments for energy conservation. Increasing the strength and endurance of our back musculature can help mitigate the effects of the prolonged wear and tear this could have on our spines while cycling.

One revealing way to tell if a back is weak is just by looking at it. If you can see the spinous processes on somebody’s back (bumps along the spine) while standing, that is a screaming sign of an area that is at risk for injury. Having a strong back is not just beneficial in cycling but for every other part of life.


Spinous processes are noticeably visible on this woman.

Back Strength (Fixes)

Training the low back and back in general to handle heavy loads over sustained periods of time will dramatically reduce your risk of pain and injury while on the bike. Adding extra tissue to the area will create a strong, supportive environment that can do the activities you’re asking it to.

Any exercise where you’re picking something up off the floor, like a deadlift, is going to be the best bang for your buck. This is because your low back is going to be the pivot point for the load you’re trying to pull. Performing high repetitions with moderate weights is going to train your muscles to be strong over time (endurance), which is exactly what you want as a cyclist.


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Interestingly, many cyclists complain of lower back spasms while riding. This is because the muscles are being overstretched, so they forcefully contract to try to bring you out of that position (i.e. your body is smarter than you!) If you want to avoid spasms, make your back stronger!

Ready To Ride Pain Free?

If you’re looking for a comprehensive, all-in-one training platform that combines injury prevention, mobility, strength training and more – you might enjoy training with our partner, Dynamic Cyclist. 

They built this program for cyclists, and are cyclists themselves. Physios, coaches and world class trainers. All at your disposal for a fraction of the cost – of ONE appointment! Their goal is to help cyclists ride pain free, and we want you to see the results for yourself. 
Sign up for a 7-day free trial HERE and join a community of cycling enthusiasts who are riding stronger, faster and better than ever before!

This Pre-Ride Warm Up Will Make You A Better Cyclist

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Most people don’t even bother with a proper warm up before biking. They figure they’ll just ease into the ride and then kick it into high gear when everything starts to feel loose. It’s a common problem in all sports and recreational physical activity. As cyclists, we often take our bodies for granted and get ahead of ourselves before the rubber even meets the pavement.

This, is how injuries occur.

Knowing what to do before a bike ride can help settle nerves, set goals, reduce the risk of injury and improve overall cycling performance. A correct cycling warm up will address several things at once, so it’s important we integrate it into our race days, training sessions and even prior to an easy ride. 

This article will briefly teach you the importance of warming up before cycling, and then show you a simple 5 minute routine that you can have in your arsenal at all times!


Source: Andriy Bezuglov – Adobe Stock

Why Warm Up Before Cycling?

One definition of intensity is the amount of load being put through the body during an exercise or activity. For example, doing a 1RM back squat is more intense than doing 50 bodyweight air squats. The heavy weight on your back is putting more axial load through the body than you doing a squat with no weight at all. With this definition, cycling is a low intensity exercise.

However, another definition of intensity is how hard the body has to work to do the exercise. Depending on your level of fitness, those 50 bodyweight air squats might take your RPE (rate of perceived exertion) to a level 8 or 9. With this definition, we can see how cycling could span the spectrum of intensity from low to high.

All this to say that cycling has the potential to place huge demands on your body despite its reputation for longevity and low impact on the joints. Yes, the bike supports your body. Yes, you push against free moving pedals instead of the immovable ground. Nevertheless, it is probably more intense than the rest of your day’s activities, so we need to prepare accordingly.


Source: brizmaker – Adobe Stock

Benefits Of A Cycling Warm Up

By performing a pre-ride cycling warm up you will increase the temperature and blood flow in your muscles. This has been shown to increase performance outcomes and reduce the risk of cramps or injury by making your tissues more pliable (“limbering up” so to speak).

Something else not often talked about is the psychological benefits to a warm up routine. This time can be used not only to prepare your body but your mind as well. Western medicine and society as a whole tends to compartmentalize the body and mind as different (sometimes opposing) entities. In reality, you as an individual are a complex intermingling of both.

Pay attention to how you feel prior to riding. Set goals for the session whether it’s for enjoyment, recovery, training or performance. Visualize the outcome of your race or desired sensations during your ride. Calm your nerves and avoid an “adrenaline dump” early in a race or heavy training session. All things we can attend to and include in the space of a dedicated warm up.


Source: fifeflyingfife – Adobe Stock

Should You Stretch Before Cycling?

It depends on the type of stretching. You’ll notice that all our warm up routines at Dynamic Cyclist are…dynamic. This means that we are constantly moving through a range of motion as opposed to just holding an end position (which is known as static or passive stretching). 

A dynamic warm up is more productive in terms of increasing the temperature of your muscles and preparing them for movement. Static stretching also has a number of downfalls prior to exercise including the decreased neural excitation of your muscles. This means they won’t fire as quickly, won’t be as strong and won’t last as long.

Holding a static stretch means you’re asking the muscle to relax into a lengthened state. This is contradictory to what you want during exercise, which is for the muscle to contract forcefully for several repetitions. These opposing ideas are a recipe for injury. Best to save any static stretching for after your ride or a rest day.

Pre-Ride Warm Up

Now that you know a little bit about why a cycling warm up is beneficial, it’s time to actually do one! This is a full 5 minute warm up routine you can use before going out on any ride. We will show you the exercise, tell you how to do it and why it will contribute to better cycling performance. 

Each exercise has an accompanied link that will take you to a follow along video teaching each exercise, led by our Dynamic Cyclist coach, Alisha. Let’s jump in!

March In Place

Try this exercise with Alisha!

Why It Works

  • Warms up the hip flexors which play an important role in recovery phase of the pedal stroke; hip flexors tend to be dysfunctional in cyclists with lower back pain
  • Balancing on one leg works unilateral stability and fires all your glute muscles which is important for power initiation while cycling and overall hip health
  • Integrates hip and core musculature together; crucial for force absorption and production while riding
  • Large movement gets the heart rate up, circulates blood and increases the body’s core temperature
  • Cross lateral movement integrates your brains left and right hemispheres which results in better focus, peace of mind and improved motor functioning

Pulse Squats

Try this exercise with Alisha!

Why It Works

  • Works all your knee extensors (quadriceps) which do the majority of the work while cycling
  • The wide stance works your adductors (groin muscles) who, in addition to adducting the leg (bringing it towards the midline) also have a secondary hip flexing function
  • Squatting deeply forces activation of the gluteus maximus, which is important for initiation of the power phase while biking
  • Alisha’s cue to drive the knees out helps engage all other glute muscles including gluteus medius/minimus; important for single leg stability and support of the pelvis while riding
  • Pressure from the saddle leads to several urogenital problems in cyclists (like numbness, infection and sexual dysfunction); this exercise opens up that sensitive area and stimulates blood flow to the surrounding tissues

Arm Circles

Try this exercise with Alisha!

Why It Works

  • Important for shoulder health; cycling limits the range of our shoulders and never takes our arms into an overhead position
  • Our shoulder joint is the most mobile joint in the human body, this exercise takes it through the full range of flexion and extension
  • Mobilizes your scapula (shoulder blade) which becomes stuck and stagnant staying in prolonged, fixed positions on the bike
  • Opens up connecting tissues in the chest and lats (under your armpit), both of which become compressed in a rounded, forward flexed cycling position
  • Bringing the arms overhead helps mobilize the thoracic spine (mid back) which cycling and several modern activities tend to stiffen

Dynamic Forward Fold

Try this exercise with Alisha!

Why It Works

  • Both strengthens AND stretches muscles on the front and back of your body through a large range of motion
  • Stretches hamstrings and back on the way down, contracts them on the way up; Stretches core, chest and hip flexors leaning back, contracts them folding forward
  • The core/chest stretch you get leaning back is great for maximizing your breathing capacity once you get on the bike where these tissues are crunched up and compressed
  • You get a pumping sensation in the low back as you hinge forward and backward which stimulates blood flow to this often injured area
  • Fluid movement that feels fantastic on the whole body; great for overall feelings of agility and nimbleness prior to riding

Dynamic Lizard

Try this exercise with Alisha!

Why It Works

  • Integrates the whole body and helps it work together as a single unit prior to getting on the bike
  • Great mobility exercise for hip health as you have to use your own strength to bring the hip into almost full flexion
  • Prepares you for mounting and dismounting, where you perform a large hip movement very much outside the range of normal pedaling; often injures bikers at the beginning of a ride when they’re not warmed up or at the end of a ride when they’re fatigued
  • Integrates loaded wrist extension into the warm up; it’s often overlooked that the wrists are under sustained load in different positions on the bike
  • Loads the upper body, particularly the front of the shoulders, which are going to be working hard when leaning forward on your handlebars

Take Your Cycling To The Next Level

This was just one of the many warm up, mobility, injury prevention and strength workout routines we have available through our Dynamic Cyclist training platform. Also available is 1-on-1 coaching for a more personalized approach.

We want to help you ride pain free and feel your best on and off the bike! We hope you join us and become part of our community of cyclists committed to riding pain free!

Here’s Why Cycling Recovery Is So Important

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In our go-go-go society the focus always seems to be on working out and never on working in. This despite the fact that we actually get stronger, leaner and more fit in the times when we’re resting as opposed to training. Cycling recovery is no different, so today we’d like to share with you how to make the most of your rest and recuperation to be a better, stronger cyclist.

Source: kenopictures – Adobe Stock

Cycling Recovery 101

Your exercise choices determine the stimulus received by the body, and your recovery choices determine the response. With every workout on the bike, lifting session in the gym or cross training exercise through another sport, you are telling your body that you want to get stronger, faster, more coordinated, etc. What are you telling it in between?

Not allowing adequate rest time in between rides or ignoring the integration of other recovery methods will lead to one cranky, broken, bent out of shape cyclist. Some of us are addicted to giving ourselves away, and have never learned how to properly receive the care that we need. If you’re serious about cycling (or just want to improve) you need to understand the difference.

Mental Health & Cycling Fatigue 

It’s sexy to “push yourself”, “give it your all” and “never quit”, but trying to do that all the time is the exact opposite of health and balance. We are constantly caught up in comparing ourselves to other people, not realizing they lead a completely different life with their own unique set of gifts and misfortunes. 

Social media and every advertisement out there wants to tell you that you’re not good enough, but when it comes to your cycling recovery, you have to realize that isn’t true. Remember to take the performance and training regimens of others with a grain of salt; that you’re your own person participating in this sport for your own reasons.

Whether it’s for competition, recreation or just simple enjoyment, there are many wonderful things about jumping on a bike. A light perspective and pain free body goes a long way in reducing cycling fatigue, and that’s exactly what the rest of this article is designed to teach you about.

Tools For Cycling Recovery

Relieving our achy backs, painful hips and sore legs after cycling is a multifaceted and often complex, individualized issue. Posture, anatomy and various lifestyle factors all have a say. However, there are certain constants that, if adhered to (even loosely), can be a significant contributor to your post cycling recovery and overall improved cycling performance.

Source: Zinkevych – Adobe Stock

Warming Up

Incorporating a warm up into your bike riding routine is one of the most effective (though underused) methods for reducing soreness and promoting post cycle recovery. Warming up before exercise has been shown to mitigate the effects of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), which is one of the worst nightmares for a cyclist.

Supple tissues that have been primed for movement with dynamic exercise perform better and are less susceptible to injury. It’s hard to imagine that a significant part of your cycling recovery takes place before you even get on a bike, but that’s just one of the many influences a pre-ride warm up will have on your performance.

Track Your Training

Simple journals that record your overall feelings before/during/after cycling, total distance, terrain and rate of perceived exertion are great tools to monitor performance over time. If you start to feel symptoms of overtraining, such as mental fog and reduced output on the bike, you can go back in your logs to determine where your recovery has gone wrong.

The truth is that you can have all the best resources at your disposal, but with no way to keep track of them it will be difficult to utilize the right one at the right time. Developing a stress-free journaling practice around your cycling will start to create associations between how different rides and periods of training work with your life and body. Without a plan, you plan to fail.

Recovery Rides

If you still want to jump on the saddle without the stress of a full blown workout, then integrating recovery rides into your training is a direct way of doing so. The recovery ride is, at its core, just reduced intensity riding that places the focus less on performance and more on movement and blood flow.

There is one significant benefit to recovery rides not often talked about in the cycling community, and that is learning to control your exertion. Forget the romantic and ego-fueled ideas about perseverance, grit and will. Our sport requires those things, but not all the time. A mature athlete knows when to attack and when to submit. 

Self Myofascial Release (SMR)

Using a foam roller or lacrosse ball to give your muscles a gentle massage is a low cost method for long-term health and bodily maintenance. They’re widely available and probably hanging out in the corner of your gym! These implements, when used correctly, have been shown to increase joint range of motion and reduce muscle soreness post exercise. 

Not only is this a relaxing practice that you can do almost anywhere, it helps to break up all those stiff, grouchy tissues in your legs and back from being on the saddle. You get to know your muscles in a new way by finding different pressure points (ouch!) and knots that you didn’t know were there, then giving those areas some much needed love and attention.

Source: JustLife – Adobe Stock

Today we wanted to give you a glimpse into our Roll & Release series here at Dynamic Cyclist! We are an all-inclusive training platform designed specifically to train cyclists and help them ride pain free. Our coach Alisha is going to take you through a foam rolling exercise you can do from home, designed to target the hip flexors!

Complete Recovery Plan For Cyclists

Dynamic Cyclist offers a completely integrated training and recovery experience for cyclists of all levels! Stretching, mobility, injury prevention and strength workout routines all in one convenient, easy to use online platform. We hope you join us in the journey to becoming stronger, better cyclists who RIDE PAIN FREE!

3 Core Exercises To Make You A Better Cyclist

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When the cycling world gathers around to discuss what might be the best core exercise for cyclists, there tends to be an all too predictable bee-line for the plank. Most sports, most gyms and most parts of the world have this same problem. Trainers, physios and even your family doctor might suggest this exercise from time to time. But what is it actually doing for us?

Cycling is not a stationary movement (even if you’re on a stationary bike!), yet we train this stand-still exercise to death hoping for some sort of miraculous return on investment. They’re a great beginner exercise, but once a certain level of proficiency is achieved (two-minute hold), it’s time to put the focus onto something more functional. 

A core workout for cyclists should be dynamic, multi-faceted and tailored to each individual’s strengths, weaknesses and other physical activities. In this article we are going to teach you three unique exercises to make you a better cyclist. We’ll show you how to do them, what they’re working and why they’ll improve your performance. 

First, the muscles.

Core Musculature

All movement emanates from the core. It’s tempting to think that cycling is all about your lower body, but your legs are not isolated entities. They are attached to that huge housing of organs, muscle and power that, if working properly, will be the starting point for any force eventually exerted through the legs and into the bike.

“Does your body have 650 muscles or does it have one?” – Paul Chek

This is a quote that is all too relevant when it comes to the core. There is not a single cell in the body that is oblivious to what the rest of your cells are up to. Fascial casings, innervations, origins, insertions, ligaments, tendons, muscle and bone make for one unbelievably complex and sophisticated movement web. A universal organism, and that organism: is you.

For these reasons, defining the core can be a herculean task all on its own. Today’s exercises will focus on tissues in the trunk and torso, as well as some auxiliary influence from the hips. 

Specifically the following:

Core Workout For Cyclists

These exercises are from one of our Dynamic Cyclist strength training routines. Week one, day two of our 3-month intermediate strength training program focuses on Core & Stability. You’ll be able to watch our certified personal trainer and coach of Dynamic Cyclist, Alisha demonstrate each exercise in the links below!

Hip Hinge Reverse Fly

Standing with your feet hip width apart, push your hips back and bend forward at the same time while maintaining a neutral neck and spine. Keep a slight bend in the knees and elbows. Squeeze your shoulder blades together and lift the arms out wide until in line with your body. Slowly release back down. Repeat. Try this exercise with Alisha!

Why It Works

This is an amazing full-body and core exercise for cyclists. 

First, you’ll hear Alisha cue to draw the belly button in while maintaining the hinged forward position. This activates the transversus abdominis (our deepest abdominal muscle), which wraps around your body like a corset and is crucial to lower back stability. It’s your body’s own built in weight belt. Training this muscle has shown to significantly reduce lower back pain in cyclists.

Second, your erector spinae muscles are working hard to hold up your torso in the bent position. Having the ability to produce stiffness in these large, powerful back muscles will transmit force more efficiently to and from your legs every time you pedal. It will also aid in injury prevention of the low back and better posture (two things a cyclist desperately needs!).

Third, actually performing the reverse fly movement with dumbbells gives the posterior (back) part of your shoulders some much needed love. The hunched over position we find ourselves in while cycling tends to stretch the shoulders and upper back into a forward, rounded position. This exercise reverses that by strengthening and tightening those same areas.

Plank Hip Dips

Starting in a forearm plank position with your tail tucked (glutes squeezed) and belly button drawn in, drop your hips down to one side, then return to the start position. Rotate to the other side, return to the start position. Repeat. Try this exercise with Alisha!

Why It Works

This is how you turn the plank into a good core bike exercise! The strength of a person’s abdominal muscles is a reliable predictor of cycling performance, and this exercise (if done correctly) works all of them. 

You’ll hear Alisha say to tuck your hips down at the beginning; this not only engages the glutes, but also the lower and upper abdominal muscles. You’ll again be cued to draw your belly button in, activating the transversus abdominis. And finally, by twisting and dropping your hips side to side, you’re working the inner and external obliques.

By working your abdominals, hips, back and upper body in conjunction with one another, you’re teaching the body to work as an integrated unit. One thing you’ll see in cyclists that lack this ability is excessive movement and swaying in the hips and torso when they start pedaling hard. This bleeds force into unnecessary areas and increases the risk of injury. So let’s not do that!

Clamshells w/Mini Band

Place a mini band just above the knees and lie down on your side with your forearm beneath your shoulder. Your heels, butt and shoulders should be in one line. Open up your top leg, squeezing your glute, and then slowly lower back to the start position. Repeat. Try this exercise with Alisha!

Why It Works

Our gluteal muscles serve an important role in cycling. They share an intimate connection with the core musculature via their attachment to the pelvis. This exercise works all the gluteal muscles and also activates tissues in the lower back.

The largest and most powerful glute muscle is the gluteus maximus, and it initiates the power phase in our pedal stroke. Being able to forcibly extend the hip is key to any sort of speed or climbing work on the bike. Well developed glutes will align your pelvis for better posture, and training them helps to counter modern activities such as sitting or driving.

The multifidus runs along the whole vertebral column and has its main bulk in the lower back. Many people have a weak multifidus due to inactivity or improper training which leads to instability. The clamshell exercise stimulates the multifidus and makes a connection between the core and hip muscles for a strong back and efficient power transfer while riding.

More Core Workouts For Cyclists

By incorporating cycling core exercises into your program, you’ll be proactive in the prevention of injury and contribute to better overall performance on the bike. Our comprehensive Dynamic Cycling core strength training routines have helped countless people ride pain and injury free.

These were just a few exercises from the hundreds you will have to choose from in our extensive video library. Dynamic Cyclist offers instructional, follow-along workouts and routines led by world class instructors, and even 1-on-1 coaching for a more personalized approach. 

Remember, everything emanates from the core. So it’s important to train it to stay healthy and strong for many more years to come!

Hip Flexor Pain and Cycling: The Ultimate Guide

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Introduction

Cycling is a sport that we and many others around the world take pleasure in as part of a regular exercise routine and healthy lifestyle. There’s nothing worse than being debilitated by an injury or pain that prevents you from doing the thing you enjoy, and that’s exactly the situation so many of our fellow cyclists find themselves in.

The hips are a major focus point when it comes to cycling as it’s where the bulk of our power first originates in the pedal stroke. Unfortunately, many people start to feel hip pain in the cycling position or afterwards when they get off their bike. 

This article will help to detail some of the hip flexor muscles that contribute to cycling, and how common causes of hip pain in cyclists can be remedied to continue enjoying the activity we all love.

What Are Hip Flexors?

The hip flexors are a group of muscles responsible for, you guessed it, flexing the hip (i.e. bringing the knee towards the chest). This group is mainly composed of the psoas, iliacus and rectus femoris muscles. Several other muscles have a ‘hip flexing’ quality to them, however when it comes to hip pain from cycling, we’ll primarily be talking about these three. 

Iliopsoas


Source: Physiopedia

Iliopsoas is a group of two (sometimes three) hip flexor muscles: psoas major, psoas minor and iliacus (the psoas minor is only present in a certain number of people). These muscles have distinct separation in the abdomen but consolidate as they move downward into the thigh, contributing to the same hip flexing function, and thus their common grouping in the term iliopsoas.

As we’ll see, the psoas in particular is a major player in anterior (front) hip pain after or during cycling. Being the most powerful hip flexor and the only muscle that connects your upper body to your lower body, it has a significant influence on the biomechanics of cycling.

Rectus Femoris


Source: Kenhub – Illustrator: Liene Znotina

The rectus femoris is a quadriceps muscle that runs straight down the middle of the thigh. It is the only quadriceps muscle that crosses the hip joint, which gives it its hip flexing function. Rectus femoris also crosses the knee joint, making it a forceful contributor to cycling in general through its dual action of knee extension (power phase) and hip flexion (recovery phase).

How Do Our Hip Flexors Contribute to Cycling?

Cyclists and runners have something unique in common. They tend to think about (and train) the downward forces applied into the ground or pedal far more than the ‘pulling’ forces that allow them to regain position for the next repetition. This can be detrimental in terms of injury risk and performance, because only half the movement is being trained! 


Source: Active For Life

Our hip flexors are mainly responsible for the last part of the recovery phase (10 to 12 o’ clock pedal position) during cycling. By using the hip flexors to ‘pull’ us through the final part of our upstroke, we can effectively utilize the force generated in the power phase and assist in creating an overall more efficient stride.

While cycling, many people are so focused on their thighs that they forget the entire leg is (or at least should be) working through the different parts of each pedal stroke. Fatigue tempts cyclists into relaxing during the 6 to 12 o’ clock position, but in doing so they leave a lot on the table in terms of output and will also overwork other muscles in the process.

Causes of Hip Flexor Pain During/After Cycling

There are usually several culprits responsible for the pain cyclists feel in their hip flexors during or after a ride. They tend to contribute to one another making the problem hard to diagnose and rectify. Though just as the issue tends to be multi-faceted, a given treatment protocol will often have overlapping benefits as well.

Here are some common causes of hip pain in cyclists and how best to approach them.


Source: Coen van de Broek

Poor Posture

Cycling puts your body into a terrible position. There’s lots of talk online about getting into a “good” or “better” position, and it is certainly something you can improve (with a proper fitting for example). Nonetheless, hunching over on a bike is not ideal for the following reasons:

  • Tendency to round the upper and lower back
  • Shoulders rounded forward, compressing the chest
  • Breathing is compromised
  • Neck is craned back
  • Hips stay in a flexed position and never fully extend
  • Pelvis is largely immobilized


Source: Jacek Dylag

While cycling, your hip is in a constant state of flexion, even when riding out of the saddle. The psoas muscle attaches to your femur and all five lumbar vertebrae. If the psoas muscles get tight and shortened from this constant flexion, they’re going to pull on these vertebrae and increase the curve in your lower back, creating what’s called lumbar lordosis.


Source: PhysioLogic

This leads to several problems. The lumbar discs are now compressed, your pelvis tilts forward (compromising movement of the femur head) and you’re likely to feel stiffness, ache and pain in the front of your hip from a short and aggravated psoas. 

An immobilized pelvis due to the sitting position on your bike also contributes to this problem. The pelvis naturally tilts back and forth as you move, as well as some slight rotation between its two halves. The seated position on your bike takes away the majority of this tilting and already minimal rotation, stagnating the hips.

Treatment

Alleviating the hip pain you feel from spinning or cycling could be as easy as doing some simple stretches! By targeting the hip flexors through stretching you’re proactively treating and correcting the poor position cycling puts you in. And if you’re already in pain, this might be a great place to start to get you back on the bike.

Here is a hip flexor focused routine for you to try. Or check out these easy hip stretches for cyclists that target the back, front and side of the joint. Stretching will help combat the tightness created through cycling and several other activities that have become a part of our lives, such as sitting and driving.

Weakness

On the bike, your hip flexors are trying to work in a mechanically disadvantaged position. Having the trunk folded over your lower body is not optimal for force production, and is basically the opposite posture than that of a sprinter (the athletes with the largest and most powerful hip flexors).  


Source: BBC

It’s almost unimaginable how many times your hips will flex while cycling. Thousands and thousands of repetitions. If the hip can’t fully flex as a result of weakness/fatigue, your body will compensate by looking for that flexion farther up the chain in your back and side. This can lead to overuse and injury of muscles trying to do an action they’re not designed for.

Treatment

There are several ways to strengthen the hip flexors and condition them for cycling. Any exercise that lifts the knee towards the chest will work the correct muscles. Many core exercises also train the hip flexors, particularly ones that move the legs. Knee raises and leg lifts, when done properly, are a great combination for core and hip flexor training.

Further, a number of factors could be inhibiting and weakening the hip flexors. Having the wrong size of bike could be putting your hips into a bad position, so it’s important that this is checked and fitted by a professional.  Stretching your glutes might also be helpful, as tight glute muscles will fight the pull of your hip flexors every time they try to fire.

Overuse

We as a cycling community often drift toward the masochistic when it comes to our training regimens and discipline towards recovery. Long hours on the road, early morning spin classes, and intervals all mix up a dangerous cocktail. Or how about the elusive “recovery ride” that promises to refuel but instead turns into a full blown workout. We’ve all been there.

Many turn to cycling because it has a reputation for being low impact. Fortunately or not, that allows us to do it…almost all the time. As previously mentioned, the positions we find ourselves in on the bike tend to compromise our bodies, especially the hips, potentially risking injury long term.

Treatment

Remember the rectus femoris? It’s the big quadriceps muscle that crosses both the knee and hip joint. It gets tremendous activity during cycling through its dual functions of knee extension and hip flexion, and is one of the tissues most vulnerable to the excessive nature of our sport. Light foam rolling or massage over this area could provide some much needed relief.

In general, just taking some time off. We know that might be the last thing some of you want to hear, but consider this: The more you like to ride, the more you need to learn to take care of yourself. Proper strength training, nutrition and rest. Luckily we have plenty of resources to help you do all those things and more.

So, Is Cycling Bad For Your Hips?

Well, it doesn’t have to be! Take this for example. It is common practice during physiotherapy after a hip replacement to integrate cycling into a person’s recovery. For the same reasons cycling leads us to pain (immobilized pelvis, hips don’t fully extend), we can use it as a regenerative practice that heals and restores function to the joint.

Finding balance is what’s important. Not just in your training volume, diet and rest, but also the length and strength of your muscles. Or the time spent folded on a bike versus being on your feet with your head up and shoulders back. 

Hip Rehab Program for Cyclists

Cycling is a great activity that can be part of a healthy, active lifestyle. However, if you are suffering from pain or discomfort while riding check out Dynamic Cyclist. This comprehensive resource addresses the most common muscle imbalances and adaptive muscle shortening that lead to pain and reduced performance on the bike. With just 15 minutes a day, you can follow along with the video programs to alleviate tension and improve posture, so you can ride pain free and reach your full potential on the bike. Don’t let muscle imbalances hold you back. Try out their 6 Week Hip Function & Rehab Program and experience the results for yourself. Click here to try 7 days free!

The Best Massage Ball Exercises for Cyclists

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If you are currently a Dynamic Cyclist subscriber the use of a ball, of some sort, has become one of your primary self care tools. Nothing feels better than TFL release, am I right?! But this little addition to your stretching and mobility programs can be something you take on trips and races as your own personal deep tissue masseuse.

I always bring a ball with me on trips and races. It’s relatively small, light and easy to pack and is the next best thing to a foam roller. At the end of a 20 hour riding day nothing feels better than to sit down and roll out the muscles and fascia. Here are some ways you can use one to help settle the legs down after a long day in the saddle.

Rolling out the quads: Simply sit on the ground with your legs straight out in front of you. Take the ball in your hand, roll it up and down your quad, pressing deeply into the muscle. You can dig right into your adductors and IT bands as well. 

Shin and Calf: Still sitting, take the ball and roll it up and down the muscles on the outside of your lower leg. You can also place the ball on the ground underneath your calf and apply pressure to roll that area out as well. Spend time pressing on the more tender spots to facilitate release.

Glutes: Just like you would with a foam roller, place the ball on the ground, place your glute on top of it and roll around. This can be pretty gnarly as the ball applies a lot more pressure than the foam roller. Simply place more weight on your feet and hands to reduce the pressure. You can also do this against a wall to better control pressure.

TFL: Cyclists can really suffer here. To find the TFL, place your finger on the front of your pelvic bone.  Slowly move down and to the outside of the thigh until you feel a ropey muscle that is the width of a finger.  It may be tender to touch. You can roll the TFL with the ball by hand or you can use the ground or the wall to really dig in.

Shoulders, Back and Scapulae: Place the ball on the ground or use a wall to focus pressure on various knots in these areas.

Feet: Place the ball on the ground and while sitting, roll the bottoms of your feet from the heel to the ball to give yourself a lovely foot massage.

Arms: After being on the bars all day, simply rolling the ball over the muscles in the upper and lower arms can feel great and will get the blood circulating again.

For something so small and unassuming, the cork ball can really help in relieving tension in the body. It’s cheap, light, portable and really effective at finding those spots that need the most attention. Check your local yoga shop to see if they have them or you can pick them up on Amazon for less than $20.

Written by Steve O’ Shaughnessy – Distance Cyclist & Podcaster

A Bit About Steve

Hi, I’m Steve O’Shaughnessy, born and raised in the town of Deep River, Ontario. I first moved west in the early 90’s and made Whistler, British Columbia my home. Years later and after careers in retail, information technology and coffee roasting I’d find myself with a wife and family in Invermere, British Columbia.

I started cycling in my 20’s after moving to Whistler, and what a place to learn to ride mountain bikes. I was a guide on Whistler Mountain well before its absorption by Intrawest. I spent most of my time on singletrack and still love a rip on the trails every now and then, but lately, riding distances has become very attractive to me.

In 2018, I rode the BC Epic 1000 and finished in (4d 4h), in 2019 I rode an ITT of the Lost Elephant (2d 15h) then again in 2020 on my single speed, where I finished in 2nd (2d9h30m) behind Justin Hettinga. 2021 was the year of my BC Epic yoyo when I also raised a modest $2000 for the Masaka Cycling Club. A huge personal challenge for me that was also a great success. 

In 2018, after the tragic loss of Ryan Correy, I picked up the Bikepack Canada podcast and put out 23 episodes before branching out to start my own podcast, My Back 40. As a podcast producer and host, my mission is to bring listeners inspiring conversations about bikepacking, ultra endurance racing, training, nutrition and the mental health benefits of this awesome activity.

I enjoy writing and recording conversations with inspiring people. If I have learned anything after over 100 conversations I’ve had, it’s that everyone has a story and can inspire. I have also learned that we are all so much more capable than we give ourselves credit for.

Check out Steve O’Shaughnessy’s podcast ‘My Back 40’!

Finally… Enjoying Adventures on the Bike Again Without Pain!

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Hi there and glad you found time to address the vexed topic of stretching. In the  following three to five minutes of reading, I’ll tell you how the Dynamic Cyclist program  helped me enjoy cycling again even after two herniated discs. Minor spoiler: With the right routine and exercises it’s easy to do and also more  beneficial in the long run than aftercare. 

A Bit About Me 

I’m Felix, a multisports enthusiast with a passion for cycling, a love for  challenges, and adventure on the mind at all times. I have done performance oriented sports since childhood, however for me it is about so much more than pushing speed or distance. The most important  aspects for me are enjoying nature and  discovering new regions. Sports are about being a part of a like-minded community, sharing an experience, and the joy of working out in a group. Sports, especially cycling, form a connection! 

Herniated Disc Number Two 

So when I was forced to take a break and was limited to a five kilometer radius around my house I felt pretty bleak. My endorphin levels nose dived like the stock market in 2008. During a period like this you need a strong partner by your side — so a thank you goes out to my  girlfriend, who put up with me during my second herniated disc and always encouraged me. 

So what happened? My morning routine during the Covid pandemic, winter months consisted of 10-15 minutes of freestyle stretching followed by a short HIIT session before work to get a little spritz for cycling. At the time I  had a lot going on at work and sat at my desk day in and day out (not always  ergonomically correct of course), but I believed that with my 10-15 minute stretch  program I would be fine. Apparently, that was not the case! As I found  out later: stretching is not just stretching. If that sounds confusing, bear with me here.  

It was a cool, gray morning in February 2021. On this particular morning I skipped the stretching program and went straight into HIIT and — bam — I went down. After being falsely diagnosed with a blockage I decided to stop training for a while only to be diagnosed with a slipped disc a few weeks down the road. Unfortunately, at the age of 28, this was already my second slipped disc. This was the absolute last warning shot for me.  Something had to change urgently!

Dynamic Cyclist – It’s a Match! 

After being frustrated with myself for not learning from the first herniated disk, I  got my act together and looked into what I could change in the future in a  sustainable way so I could avoid another slipped disc. I had to approach the  whole thing from a holistic perspective. 

What did this involve for me? Acutely and also in the long term a good physio, of course. However, I also had  to change my own behaviour. In addition to a balanced diet this included active regeneration and stretching. My herniated disc is partially genetically inherited (one more reason to take preventive action). As luck would have it I  found the Dynamic Cyclist program. It was a match!  

Give Yourself a Break From the Daily Madness 

The first time I tried the program I was hooked by the concept and presentation. Dynamic Cyclist only includes the most important aspects of mobility and stretching without any unnecessary fluff. It has a logical structure and a stretch program that is designed to guide you through the process of gaining mobility and flexibility over time. I can confirm that it does not get boring. I can easily find where I left off in the program from my home screen and the exercises have become my daily routine. Now my 15 minutes of stretching each day is  more efficiently invested than before my herniated disc. So it is  not the time that matters most, but the selection of the right  exercises and the logical sequence they are performed in. I enjoy the videos so much that some days I  even complete two videos, especially after cycling when my hip flexors are tight. This is another great aspect:  you can easily find the relevant cycling “pain points”  within the app and therefore work areas that compromise your mobility. 

Vary Your Training and Discover New Ways 

I have yet to find a comparable program that is as strong in content as Dynamic  Cyclist, both in depth and breadth. In addition to the Stretching & Mobility  portion, there are numerous other training focuses you can use in the app such  as Strength Training, Roll & Release, or Challenges. Before I found Dynamic Cyclist I found stretching boring, but necessary for me to continue doing my sport in a performance-oriented  way. With Dynamic Cyclist I feel I am at the leading edge again. Everything is more fun with good instruction! In person instruction is nice, but you are much more likely to take 15 minutes and stretch efficiently through an online video program than drag yourself to your local yoga studio every single day. I’m glad I found Dynamic Cyclist. It has a permanent place in my daily  routine and should be considered by everyone who loves to ride. 

Written by Felix Rähmer – Endurance Cyclist

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