Bike Exercises (particularly knees)

[PotomacCyclist]

Back bridges are another lower back exercise. Lie on your back with knees flexed and feet near your rear. Then lift your torso and butt so that there are only two points of contact on the ground, the shoulder blades and your heels. Keep your torso straight, from the shoulder blades to the knees. You can either hold the position or do reps. I usually do a steady hold, but I’m not sure which is supposed to be tougher.

(There’s a more advanced version, the neck bridge or the wrestler’s bridge, where the points of contact are the top of your head and the heels. This builds neck and upper back strength BUT it can be risky if you don’t already have decent neck and upper back stability. If you are new to this, DON’T do the neck bridge!)

Balance out the bridge with a front exercise. Planks are a basic option. No equipment needed, but a mat would be helpful to avoid rug marks on your forearms. Keep everything straight, from the shoulders all the way to your heels. The points of contact are your forearms/hands and the forefeet. There are advanced variations, such as the one-leg/one-arm plank, planks where you bring one leg forward at a time on the side toward your elbows, and twisting planks (push-up position, raise one arm toward the ceiling as if you’re trying to reach the ceiling, then twist back down and reach under and across your torso, while keeping the torso straight). The variations can be quite tough, so stick with basic planks if you’re just starting out.

The bicycle exercise is a good exercise for the obliques. No bike required. Lie down (preferably on a mat). Legs raised slightly but not too much, maybe 4-6 inches off the ground. Hands behind or on the sides of your head, not locked behind. Bend your left elbow to your right knee. (Keep your left leg extended.) Lower back again but don’t drop the right leg to the ground. Then bend your right elbow to your left knee, keeping the right leg extended. Alternate like this for a set. The straight leg should always be kept in the air, not resting on the ground. Beginners are likely to find this exercise to be very difficult. Advanced athletes might find it a little too easy.

I’ve seen some very ugly form when people do this in the gym. They keep the loose leg nearly pointed overhead, which takes all the stress off the abs. This makes the exercise almost useless. Keep the legs extended, with the heels only a few inches off the ground except when you are bringing the knee to the opposite elbow. Don’t pull on your neck or head with your hands. Keep the hands loose on the side of your head. Your core should be doing all the work.

If you have poor core strength, you’re likely to get very winded from just one set. Your abs will ache quite a bit, temporarily. That means that you’re working them. Be cautious about how many reps you do in your first weeks. Some stress is beneficial, but excessive stress can lead to injury. Start off with one set in the first week and stick with that until your body adapts. Over time, you can gradually increase reps and/or sets, but don’t add huge amounts suddenly.

I’d highly recommend that you do some sort of warm-up before any of these exercises, even if it’s just marching in place for 5-10 minutes. It’s not a good idea to do strength exercises with cold muscles and joints.

***
I don’t do strength workouts every day. You need to give your muscles a chance to recover, especially if you work them hard. It’s not the same thing as cycling, which experienced athletes can do on consecutive days (but occasional rest days are still a good idea).

But there is a concept of “greasing the groove”, which is not as dirty as it sounds. It just means that you add reps whenever you can during the day, for specific exercises. Some of the bodyweight exercise people incorporate this concept into their programs. I read about it from a popular trainer named Pavel (Tsatsouline), a former Russian special forces soldier who now runs fitness programs and writes fitness books in the U.S. I’ve never tried that approach, but I thought I’d mention it because some people follow this method.

My reservation is the lack of a warm-up and the lack of rest and recovery. Strength training by definition is more intense than aerobic exercise is. It breaks down the muscles far more than cycling does. That’s normal. But with that extra microdamage, you need more time to recover. The body rebuilds the muscle. The result is a slightly stronger and more efficient muscle. Do that enough times over a period of weeks and months, and you end up stronger. But do that too often with insufficient rest and recovery, and you won’t repair the microdamage. That leads to macrodamage, i.e., an injury.

I prefer the idea of doing a more intense and focused strength workout and then moving on. I wait about 48 hours in between strength workouts. I do a complete full-body program each time. Or if I don’t have much time, I just do some core exercises. I don’t do the push, pull, legs split that bodybuilders do, as I mentioned before. That’s not the best approach for cyclists and other non-bodybuilders.

As I mentioned before in the thread, muscle balance is important. If you work one major muscle group, you need to work the antagonist or complementary muscle groups too. Otherwise, you risk developing severe imbalances, which basically guarantee that you will get injured in the near future. For example, if you only work your abs but not your lower back and hips, you will develop problems.

***
I don’t think you need to worry about cycling-specific core workouts. A strong core is important but as a piece of the puzzle. Unlike a race-specific workout, specificity isn’t as important. You are only looking to build general core strength, stability and coordination. That fitness will come in handy no matter what, whether you ride a tri bike, a road bike, a mountain bike or a hybrid/commuter bike.

Outside of the office, heavier squats and similar total-body exercises will also work the core quite well. But again, you have to use good form and start off easy. Only increase the intensity gradually. If you jump in there suddenly and try lifting twice your bodyweight on the first day, you will injure yourself. (Note: I can’t lift twice my bodyweight either.) For weighted exercises, try them out with just bodyweight for a week or two, or longer, until you learn proper form. Then move up to light weights and adapt. Heavy weights and beginners don’t mix.

[PotomacCyclist]

Yes, push-ups are an excellent upper-body/core exercise. Just be sure to balance them out with some sort of lat exercise. Maybe a shoulder exercise too. It’s a little tougher to do back exercises in an office. If you have a dumbbell, you could do a dumbbell row. It will be tougher to do pull-ups in the office. (Plus many people have difficulty doing pull-ups.)

If you’re doing an evening strength session, I don’t think you need to do additional exercises during the day at the office. More is not always better. If your evening session is too easy, bump up the intensity a little bit. For push-ups, you can start to stagger the hands, so that one hand is slightly forward of the other. Alternate sets, with left hand forward, then right hand forward. The farther ahead you place one hand, the tougher the exercise gets for that side. (If you’re really advanced, you can do one-hand push-ups. But those are very tough. I can’t do them… yet.)

[GuyContinental]

Awesome posts PC, thanks- I printed them out and will get rolling today.

[PotomacCyclist]

Variety is good, both for physical reasons and for mental reasons. I’ve recently switched up my core routine, just for something different. You should probably switch up your core workouts every other month or so. This will keep the routine from becoming stale and tedious. New exercises may also work the muscles in slightly different manners.

I’ve started adding renegade rows, reverse crunches, Supermans and Saxon bends. You need dumbbells for the renegade rows and a dumbbell or weight plate (or maybe a large bottle of water) for the Saxon bends. Renegade rows require a bit of coordination, so be careful if you decide to try them. I’m still learning about them, but I believe that you start in a push-up position, with a dumbbell in each hand. Keep the torso stabilized as you lift one dumbbell to your side. Carefully lower it back down and then lift the other dumbbell. Do not twist your torso. Some videos show people doing a push-up in between each pair of DB lifts. Since I already do push-ups earlier in the workout, I skip this part. But I might try it sometime.

Even though you might think that hex-shaped DBs are best for this exercise, some articles recommend round DBs because of the instability. I would be very careful about trying this. If you don’t have good coordination and core stability, you can easily lose focus and slip. That means that your face would come crashing down to the floor. I’ve only tried the hex-shaped DBs so far.

Saxon bends are like side bends except you hold the weight overhead, with extended arms. Stand up and slowly bend from side to side with the weights held overhead. Start off with very light weights, until you know what you can handle. Or just try it with no weight for a few reps and see what it feels like. You’ll feel the stress on the sides of your torso. Don’t bend forward or twist when doing the exercise.

NOTE: Many people caution against doing twisting and bending exercises, because of the stress on the lower spine. If any of these exercises cause twinges in the lower back (i.e., spine), don’t do them. Or cut back on the weight when trying them. The muscles should be stressed, not the spine. I’ve never had any lower back problems from doing any of these exercises, but it’s always something to keep in mind, especially when just starting out with strength training. It’s always vital to avoid injury.

One exercise that you should probably avoid are Good Mornings, where you bend forward at the waist while standing, with a barbell on your shoulders. I believe that martial arts star Bruce Lee injured his back doing this exercise, nearly ending his fitness and TV/movie career. Another bad exercise is the lat pulldown behind the neck. If you choose to do this exercise, ALWAYS pull down in front of the face. If you do dumbbell shrugs (which you don’t really need to do), NEVER roll your shoulders while holding weights. Shrug straight up and lower back down only.

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