Manon: Whether you are new to cycling or an experienced rider, there are plenty of pitfalls
when it comes to your riding position and style. Conor: We all have our own weaknesses when
it comes to maintaining an efficient and comfortable position on the bike,
but there are some bad habits that creep into our riding style all too easily. We're going to
take a look at a few of them and figure out how we can avoid them happening in the first place.
[music] Manon:
Starting things off with hunched shoulders. Riding around like a cranky goblin who likes
who just got off a 20-hour flight from Australia. It's a common problem,
hunching over the handle bars, looking like you're riding in a very uncomfortable position.
Conor: It is a riding style that does creep up over time, especially if you're riding lots.
The muscles in your upper body tighten over time. You might not even realize that you're hunching.
It can lead to excruciating pain in your shoulders and prove to be a limiting factor to your riding.
I, myself, once got such bad pain in my upper back and my shoulders I couldn't pull the brakes
without wincing. Why do we hunch and what leads us to become a huncher? We've also
got the opinion of professional bike fitter and physiotherapist Bryan McCullough to weigh
in on the matter. Thanks for joining us, Bryan. Hunched shoulders to start off. What is your take?
Bryan: My take on this is it's something that we see a lot of. You've already discussed about
some of the bike elements that might cause you to adopt that position on the bike,
but conditioning is one of the other big things that will lead to this. We talk about the
muscles around our back and shoulder blades, we generally call them your posterior chain muscles.
If those muscles are not quite strong enough to hold you up against the forces of gravity,
our body's going to tend to curl up into a little bit of a more flexed position to try and actually
absorb those forces. Posterior chain strength along our back is a really important way to
improve our cycling posture. If we're lacking in that area, we're going to tend to curl up a
little bit more in that hunched position. It's not to say that if you've got a hunched spine
you're in a bad position. You can always work on improving it as best as it can be for you.
Conor: What are your top tips to solve the hunched back? Myself and Manon actually called
it the angry goblin look on the bike. [laughter] Bryan: How do we deal with the angry goblin?
First of all, the bike fit is really important because what we need to do is try to see if we can
match up the position of the bike to the rider's current flexibility or strength. The other side to
look at is what can we do to improve the rider's strength and resilience themselves?
Obviously, getting a nice, long-spine position will improve your ability to breath well, and
therefore power the engine when you're cycling. What we need to do is work on posterior muscle
strength, so that's getting things like deadlifts, bent-over rows, and some of those bigger,
heavier lifts going on. By increasing the strength of those muscles we'll be able to hold a position
for longer, being able to produce power on the bike, but also we'll be able to be more
comfortable when we're riding. We know that when we're more comfortable we can
drive more power into the pedals as well. Manon: One key piece of advice I would
give someone if you are a huncher is to try raising your bars. Having your bars too low,
we can overcompensate by reaching down further, and our upper body doesn't get the right support.
Conor: If you can raise your bars that little bit it will help you relax your upper body
and avoid you riding in that cranky goblin look. [music]
Next up, riding on the drops or lack of riding on the drops to be precise.
Great use of the drops will enable you to ride in a much more aerodynamic position,
save you energy, and give yourself a much more powerful position when sprinting. The thing is,
many of us get lazy and ride on the hood. Don't use the drops as much as we should. Even Fabian
Cancellara used to sprint on the hoods. Manon: It didn't stop him from winning,
though, did it Conor? I remember getting told off by my old team managers always riding on the tops.
If you are a serial offender for always riding on the tops,
then why not try and factor in some longer stints on the drops on your rides?
It'll benefit you in the long-run and help you get away from that lazy top position.
[music] Conor:
Next on the list of our bad habits agenda, flicking the knee out whilst peddling.
Manon: It's a bad habit we often see from pros all the way down to beginner riders.
It often happens right at the top of the pedal stroke at 12:00 o'clock, where the knee just
flicks out slightly. It can also be seen in the ankle with unstable movement on each pedal stroke.
Conor: Why do we flick our knee out whilst we pedal, and is it necessarily a bad thing?
Bryan: Much like everything else, in cycling there's lots of different reasons why riders
will do this. Probably the most common is if a rider is unstable on the saddle.
When a rider is unstable on the saddle you'll see all sorts of additional movements, and that's the
body trying to combat this instability to try and resolve and stay stable to produce power.
If the saddle's too high we'll find the pelvis will shift from side to side, and the legs will
therefore move in and out as they try and combat that movement that's happening. The other side
to look at, if we go outside of bike fit, is also the stability at the shoe and the pedal interface.
If you can imagine, if we stand on an uneven or an unsteady or a soft surface our knee is
going to wobble around a lot as we bend our knee. If we can improve the stability of the foot pedal
interface we're going to end up having a much steadier leg to push through. From the top down
we look at the strength around the hip, so muscle strength conditioning of the hip. Particularly
the glute muscles, which control the rotation of the actual leg as you push down, is really really
important. We would focus on strength from that perspective, stability of the foot pedal interface
from the foot, and then finally making sure that you've got your saddle height absolutely nailed so
the pelvis is nice and stable. [music]
Manon: Now moving on to probably one of the most common bad habit riding styles, the wrong saddle
height. Can't even touch the pedals on this bike. Conor: Saddle too high and you can increase muscle
tightness and also increase the pressure you feel on the saddle, which is something
that may lead to an increased risk of saddle sores. Now you'll also experience
a lot of power at the bottom of the pedal stroke. Manon: Saddle too low, on the other hand, you may
experience some knee pain and it will reduce your ability to put the power down whilst in the saddle
and it can shorten your hamstrings too. Conor: No one is the same and everyone
rides with slightly different techniques, so don't assume just because you've seen someone
ride with a super high saddle height that you should do the same. You may end up compensating
for a high saddle height by overextending your knee or foot angle. Now, as a guide, if you want
to try to find the right saddle height look for a saddle knee angle of between 140 and 145 degrees.
You could take a side-on shot and work this out for yourself by analyzing your position.
Manon: However, you also need to consider your foot angle, which should be around 10
to 20 degrees. [music]
When the going really gets tough, all your form can go out the window. You'll start
moving your body all around and do anything you can to keep those pedals turning. Some riders,
though, look solid as a rock on the bike. Conor: Moving around on the bike is a definite
bad habit we allow to creep into our riding when the going gets tough and our concentration lapses.
Manon: At the moment of extreme fatigue it feels
like any sort of movement is going to propel us forward,
but is this a good idea when the going gets tough? Bryan: When it comes to moving on the bike,
other than your legs producing power, the real problem here for most people is comfort. I think
a lot of cyclists are afraid to admit it because cycling has a very storied relationship with
pain and suffering, but if we get confused about where the pain and suffering should be coming from
we might not realize the solution or where the problem is coming from. In a lot of cases saddle
comfort is what's causing people to shift and move around to try and find-- it's just your body
searching for a solution to a better position. That's number one. The other is just your pressure
and weight distribution on the bike as well. If you've got too much pressure forward on the
bike, on our hands, you'll find that we keep moving our hands around. If we've got too much
pressure on the saddle or the saddle's not in the right position, we'll be shifting around looking
for the right position to get comfortable [Music]
Conor: Last bad habit for the position police to critique, sitting wonky on the saddle. Now hands
up, I am quite a big offender when it comes to this one and it can be hard to know you're
actually doing it. The only way to really tell is to get someone to ride behind you, take a look at
your position, and then afterwards tell you this. Manon: Conor you do know you sit
wonky on the saddle? Conor: Wonky? Do I?
Manon: Yes. Conor: Really?
Manon: I know, yes. This is the worst way to crack someone when on a ride,
so if you are going to inform them about their wonkiness be gentle on them.
Conor: Thanks for telling me though, Manon. Manon: It's all right. I thought you should know.
Now there are a whole host of different reasons on why you might be sitting wonky on the saddle.
It could be different leg lengths or the wrong cleat setup.
Conor: The reason I was actually sitting wonkily on the saddle was because my glutes weren't firing
correctly, and I was relying on my hamstrings a little too much. After some activation exercises,
such as glute bridges, I managed to solve the problem, but it did take
quite a lot of hard work off the bike. Bryan: The number one reason we'll see
people sitting either off-center or wonkily, as you put it, on a saddle is generally saddle
height. In this case most often than not, it's the saddle height that's a little bit too high.
Once a saddle is too high, it causes a difficulty in one leg reaching the bottom of the pedal stroke
and we've got to have the pelvis shifting from side-to-side to reach that. If we combine that
with a possible leg-length discrepancy, and we all have slight leg-length discrepancies,
but if that's slightly larger, we're attaching an asymmetrical human being to a symmetrical bike.
We've suddenly got a slightly too high saddle height, we're going to find the pelvis has to
keep reaching to one side just to get to the bottom of the pedal stroke. Moreover, it may even
just shift completely to one side and stay there. Very often, saddle height is at the heart of these
problems. Then we have to look at the rider's body and look at whether it is leg-length discrepancies
or muscle strength discrepancies. Riders will also tend to gravitate towards their stronger side,
so they'll shift their weight a little bit more towards their right side, for example, because
they know they can push more efficiently through that side. You may even see them shifting to try
to push through their stronger side as well. Conor: That's interesting. My right side is
definitely stronger then, I think. Bryan: Sounds like it.
Conor: Yes. [laughs] Bryan, thanks very much for all your information. It's been a really
big help to us and it's been great to hear such a valuable insight. Thank you very much.
Bryan: No problem. Happy to join you, Conor. Good luck.
Conor: Those are some bad habits to avoid out on the ride in the new year.
Manon: Did we miss any? If we did, please leave them in the comment
section below. Once you're down there, give this video a big thumbs up if you enjoyed.
Conor: Thanks for watching everyone. Manon: Conor, stop wobbling.
Stop hunching the shoulders as well. Conor: You look like an angry goblin.
Manon: I beg your pardon. [laughter]
How rude. [00:11:42] [END OF AUDIO]