Perfect
Your Pedaling Palm Protection Relax! Hook Your Thumbs Push-up Power! |
How
to Shift Corner Fearlessly Take Julis Advice Use Bigger Gears Off Road Just Learning? |
1898 ad for Cleveland bicycles from Harpers Magazine more old ads |
Perfect
Your Pedaling Its normal to hop on a bike and push down on the pedals. But, if thats all you do, youll never develop a smooth, efficient pedal stroke. Practice this instead: When the pedals reach 3 oclock on the pedal stroke, pull back with a swiping motion as if you are wiping mud off the bottom of your shoes. Youll notice an immediate boost in power, especially on hills. And, if you focus on this technique for only a few rides, your pedal stroke will smooth out and become far more efficient. In time, youll do it automatically. BACK Palm Protection Two nerves run through your palms and they can become painfully numb from cycling. In fact, my high-school chum Bruce Holden once lost the feeling in both hands for six weeks after a ride we took into the White Mountain of New Hampshire. Whatd he do wrong? He made three serious mistakes: 1 He rode without gloves (always ride with comfortable, nicely padded cycling gloves because they save your hands and also provide palm protection if you crash); 2 He gripped the bars too tightly (relax your grip); and 3 He didnt move his hands around to different parts of the handlebars (every 10 minutes move your hands and grip in a different place). Avoid these mistakes and you should avoid palm problems. BACK Relax! One of the most common mistakes is riding while youre too tight in the upper body. If you see someone riding and you see locked shoulders and straight, stiff arms, youre looking at someone whos probably going to have a sore neck and arms at the end of the ride and someone whos tiring out muscles for no good reason. Relax when youre riding. Keep nice, loose, bent arms. Drop your shoulders and get comfortable. Train yourself to relax by, every 15 minutes or so, shrugging your shoulders to get them to drop and relax. Bring your elbows down and closer together and shake your arms to relax them. Bend your elbows. Exhale. Think about letting all that tension leave your neck, shoulders and arms. Youll feel a whole lot better and have a lot more control of your bike if you can learn to ride comfortably like this. BACK Hook Your Thumbs An important safety measure is always keeping at least one of your thumbs beneath the handlebars. If you can do this, youll avoid crashing due to your hands slipping off the bars. This can happen if you hold onto the tops with all your fingers over the handlebars. In this position, if you hit a bump and arent prepared, your hands can slip off causing a crash. This common accident can be prevented by simply keeping your thumbs in the right place. BACK Push-up Power! If you suffer from a sore neck on rides and youre satisfied with the fit of your bike, you should try adding sets of push-ups to your workout routine. Even if you only do them a few days a week, I think youll find that they make your neck pain go away. This happens because the push-ups strengthen the muscles that support the neck, which means they wont tire on rides and get sore. BACK How to Shift If you think of yourself as the bikes engine and try to shift frequently to maintain a comfortable and steady pedaling effort, youll begin to use the gears more effectively. Keep in mind that shifting works best when you apply only light pedal pressure to the pedals. So shift before the hill gets too steep and never stomp the pedals until a shift has taken place. Most people find a pedal cadence (how many times one pedal goes around in a minute) of about 60 to 90 rpm about right. Find what feels good for you and then shift every time its either too hard or too easy to pedal. When you realize that you need to shift, use the right shift lever for small adjustments in pedal effort and use the left lever for major changes in how hard or easy it is to pedal. Most important: dont be afraid to shift. Shift often and youll get good at it and on rides youll save energy and feel better. BACK Corner Fearlessly When you come into a scary turn, if you can get yourself to look to the inside of the turn (dont just turn your eyes, turn your head and shoulders) youll find that the corner is not so scary anymore and youll scoot right around it. BACK Take Julis Advice Mountain bike champ Juli Furtado once said, The faster you go, the easier it gets. Its great advice. Most of the bike handling problems people have are related to riding the brakes too much. If you can back off the brakes and let the bike roll, youll discover the wonders of momentum: with a little more speed, the bike gains stability, it gets easier to hold the good line and you steamroll obstacles that used to give you fits. BACK Use Bigger Gears Off Road To make off-road rides smoother and more comfortable, try riding in slightly larger gears. This allows you to support more of your weight on the pedals and get some off your seat, which allows floating over, rather than pounding into ruts, roots and other rough stuff. The same trick works riding your road bike over bumpy pavement. Give it a try! BACK Just Learning? New cyclists are often afraid to ride on busy streets because theyre not confident getting into the pedals, shifting and braking. You could pedal laps around the neighborhood. A more exciting approach is putting your bike in the car (bring along a cooler with some goodies) and driving to a safe country road. Here you can ride in either/both direction(s) from your car to see some scenery while practicing your skills on a safe road! BACK |