Yoga can be a great addition to any endurance athlete’s training plan and overall health. It can improve your strength and balance, as well as give you a heightened sense of how your body moves. But like all aspects of fitness, it’s not without risks. The Benefits of Yoga for Endurance Sports Yoga helps develop strength through controlled movements and poses. In any sport, consistent movement is vital for efficiency
5 Tips that will help you (and your hands) feel more comfortable on your bike:
Have you ever been on your bike, inside or outside, and your hands go numb when you ride? Then you take your numb hand off the handlebars, shake it around for a bit, drop it to your side, and wait for the tingling to stop and the feeling to come back. A couple of nights ago in one of our cycling classes, this very question came up about “numb hands”
10 Myths of Indoor Cycle Rider Setup / Bike Fit
NOTE: I’ll be publishing what I believe are the 10 Myths of Indoor Cycle Rider Setup / Bike Fit on Wednesdays each week, starting today with: Myth #1 – It’s proper, for you the instructor, to cue people to draw in their knees. I cringe whenever I hear; “OK people, now I want everyone to bring in your knees!” because, for most of the riders in class, everyone’s knees are
Change in Technology Has Me Re-Thinking Single Leg Pedaling Drills
During a class I attending yesterday, the Instructor had everyone doing one-legged pedaling drills… one legged as in pedaling with one foot un-clipped and held out to the side or rested on the frame. That’s wrong/contraindicated… isn’t it? My initial reaction was to do what I normally do in this situation, I would just ignore his cue. Unfortunately I was setup in the dead center of the room and I quickly
More on proper hand positions while riding.
Paul Swift from BikeFit sent out an infographic showing proper wrist alignment – their example is for a mountain bike, but the concept is identical no matter what you’re riding. If you’ve been to WSSC, BikeFit is the company who provides the very popular bicycle shoe cleat alignment / adjustment service. Complaints about hand numbness are typically the result of riding with hyper-extended wrists. We’ve explored the need for proper hand
More on proper hand positions while riding.
Paul Swift from BikeFit sent out an infographic showing proper wrist alignment – their example is for a mountain bike, but the concept is identical no matter what you’re riding. If you’ve been to WSSC, BikeFit is the company who provides the very popular bicycle shoe cleat alignment / adjustment service. Complaints about hand numbness are typically the result of riding with hyper-extended wrists. We’ve explored the need for proper hand
Pedal, Pedal, Pedal like your life depends on it
Beyond the obvious fitness benefits Indoor Cycling provides to our outdoor riders, there’s an overlooked skill that will make your participants smoother and safer riders in a pace-line… riding fixed-gear Indoor Cycles teaches us to pedal constantly – i.e. not starting and stopping while riding. It’s rare that you’ll ever have your class stop pedaling. We start turning the cranks and don’t stop until the end 45 minutes later. Not surprisingly
Eagles pedaling through the air metaphor
I used a new metaphor this morning that seemed to resonate with my class. Watch this video and see if you can see the similarity between an eagle catching a fish and proper pedaling technique. Through the magic of slow-motion photography it’s obvious that the act of plucking a large salmon out of the water is a very fluid, near circular, motion by these powerful birds. This morning was a
How do you communicate pedal technique… USA or EU?
Many (if not most of us) were taught some variation of; “scrape gum off the bottom of your shoe” and “try to push over the top” as the “proper” way to describe how to pedal like a “real” cyclist. But is that correct? If we really want our participants to pedal like a cyclist, is this the best way to cue proper/efficient pedaling technique? My recently completed professional bicycle-fitting with
More on preventing carpal tunnel / hand numbness in your students
Back on May 30th of last year, this post; Correcting Student’s Form – Proper Hand Position discussed a problem that a rider in my class was experiencing. Her hands were going to sleep after riding for 30 or so minutes. I offered my suggested solution once I figured out where her problem was coming from. This is a not uncommon problem with outdoor cyclists and it sounds like it’s becoming more of a problem
Myth #10 of Indoor Cycle Rider Setup / Bike Fit
Myth # 10 – There’s only one place your knee should be “over pedal” and that’s when the forward pedal is horizontal. Actually there’s a second place where your knee should line up vertically with the center-line of pedal – when the pedals are at BDC (bottom dead center) like this picture shows. But wait John, for the knee to be over pedal, doesn’t that mean that the lower leg would be
