Martin says I recently read or heard that it's important to ensure your
glutes are firing when you cycle, as they are the largest muscle.
It made me, that's what he's saying here.
He says it made me realize that it is my thigh muscles always hurt
when I ride hard, not my glutes.
When he says thigh, I assume that he's talking about his Quadris.
And my next rides, I consciously relaxed my thigh muscles
or quadriceps and ensured.
I kept the same power.
The major Dom's delayed onset muscle soreness I had in my glutes a couple
of days afterwards, show me that this had made the change that I wanted.
So he drew the assumption that because he had relaxed those, it
required more from his glutes and the soreness was telling him as much
says, I may be wrong, but it seemed my actual power output was a bit lower.
And this leads to a few questions.
Number one.
Is it ever a question of 100% glutes or 100% thigh muscles?
Or is it always a balance?
Should we take these one at a time?
Um,
you want to read through them once, read through them and then come back to them.
Cool.
Number two, how much more power should I expect if I am harnessing
my glutes appropriately now, number three, in the short term, will I see
a reduction in power and FTP using my relatively untrained, gluten.
And before, should I try and use both glutes and thigh
muscles or will that occur?
Naturally love the podcast in the app.
I know I improve when I focus on the follow on following the plan.
True story there.
Yeah.
So I really wanted to understand this.
So I dug into it and went over six studies, a review, looked
into some of the studies in a number of studies in the review.
Um, a lot of information here.
I'm going to blow through it pretty quickly just to give you
the gist of a few of these studies.
Um, one of them compared treadmill, cycling and stationary turbo cycling.
They, uh, the treadmill favored.
I won't even give you the muscle names.
There's no point in that, but the treadmill favorite one set of muscles, the
turbo favorite and other set of muscles.
So just by riding slightly differently, it shifted the
emphasis on different muscle groups.
Okay.
Um, another one compared hidden intensity training to moderate
intensity, continuous training.
They saw greater activation in the, in the glutes, or again, just shifted
the emphasis with high intensity.
It did.
And it showed in this case that high intensity training.
Gluten glute Maximus activation.
Okay, cool.
Um, then another one riding at 70% VO, two max power, three different torso angles.
So they changed their torso angles each time that had an influence on
when and how, how often, where in the power stroke, the glute max fired.
Okay.
Interesting.
Also, um, another one put mountain bikers on a 10, 20% and a flat.
So, so the bike angle changed and changes in grade changed muscle activation timing.
They didn't look at the glute Maximus, but the fact is changing the bike's position.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Activation rate.
Cause that probably, I bet similar to the previous test.
I bet when they changed the grade of the bike, I bet it also
changed the rider's position.
Probably, probably, maybe not happen a hundred percent.
It's going to have to
yeah.
Tony guess he'll do really.
And then, uh, another one did 250 Watts.
For all three tests, but they did want a 60 RPM one, an
80 RPM wanted a hundred RPM.
And this showed that cadence affected onset and the offset
of certain muscle activation.
So when they started to kick in, when they started to phase out interesting
also, and then the review showed a lot of things specific to glute Maximus and
that it's, um, it, it, it depends on the.
Th there's more activation the higher the work level.
Oh, duh.
That makes perfect sense.
Pedaling rate increased its activation from 40 to a hundred,
but there was a sweet spot, right?
About 90, where it was almost non-existent where, where the, the
muscle activation was just gone.
Interesting.
So it's like, they'd hit a sweet spot where they didn't, I
don't know, for whatever reason it was all quite intensive.
Um, the one where it showed that the glute max was more active in a
crouched position versus an upright.
So I think time, trial or criteria and the drops position, more gluten involvement
than if you're sitting up, I feel that
tall, you feel that too.
And the opposite really
sort of like, wait a minute teaching position.
I feel it all on my quads and they burn up and
my glutes haven't yet.
And maybe that's a saddle position or a rotation position,
your body position, the bike.
I think it's usually.
The, the saddle height is too low.
And if you get it up really
high that's that's the next one.
So that one of his studies in the review said, saddle height greatly
influences relative glute max to vastus matter a media media.
Slatter Alice.
So your quads act.
So the proportion between those satellite is the, probably the biggest
influence from what I gleaned from
this.
Yeah.
One thing to clarify all my time, trial bike.
Yeah.
I feel the same thing as you guys.
It's mostly quad.
Okay.
For me, I think that a lot of that is because I'm so.
And I'm like, you know, my saddle is as far forward as it can go within the rules.
And then I'm basically perched on the very end of that thing.
Right.
Um, but I've noticed that on my road bike, if I'm in the tops, uh, or on
the hoods, and then I go down to the drops, I get more, I get more, I at
least perceived activation of my glutes, relatively speaking to the upright.
Okay.
So, so if we go back to the questions, is it a question of a hundred percent
glutes or a hundred percent thigh muscles?
Or is it always a bounce, easy answer, always a balance.
There's the, you, can't the only way you could phase out one or the other would
be to extend that, extend your knee completely and lock it or extend your hip.
Completely unlock it.
And that's not going to happen.
If you're pedaling a bike, it's not gonna happen.
Really.
If you're doing anything, I'm not sure you can do that.
Walking without looking like Frankenstein or something, which is pretty unrealistic.
Um, question
two, how much power should he expect if he's harnessing his glutes
appropriately?
Yeah.
That's something that's super, I'm going to be difficult to
quantify far too variable.
We just showed all the things that can influence when these, when these
muscles innovate, how intensely they, they, uh, contribute, et cetera.
Um, but.
There is potential for more contribution to the pedal stroke.
So if you're packing around dormant glutes right now, because you don't train
them, you haven't done any activation, you never do squats or deadlifts or
anything that might fi get them firing.
More muscle mass could lend itself to the pedal stroke probably will considering
these are the muscles that extend the hips and hip extension takes place.
Even though it's not a heck of a lot of hip extension.
And when we're folded over on a bike and we're just dropping our knee down, it's
not a lot of it, but there is still his extension and the glutes drive that.
Uh, his third question in the short term, will I see a reduction in
power and FTP using my relatively
untrained, almost definitely.
And you see evidence of this when they try to retrain a runner's gait,
when they throw something new at them, it's an entire, it's almost
like they're starting from scratch.
They have to learn this.
And then, uh, Um, acquire a new level of running efficiency and it takes
time and the criticism is out of that.
They've never given enough time.
So they changed a runner's gate and two weeks later, they haven't
improved their efficiency tanks.
Well, yeah, it's only been two weeks.
Give them two years then maybe we can fairly assess that.
But the point is who wants to dedicate two years to.
Finds his tiny little refinement and something that may or may not pay
off.
I kind of feel like that's what I did, uh, coming back with my knee
issues and I've, I peddled on the bike very differently than I used to.
Um, like almost entirely differently.
And I do feel like a lot of activation.
It sucks though, to your point.
It's, it's not anything that like, I, I absolutely recommend, I don't
feel like something I want to clarify too is just because I use.
I feel like because I have no data to back this up, but I feel like
everything is more balanced to call across quadriceps and glutes.
It doesn't mean that I have unlocked a level of efficiency that
I didn't have before necessarily
majorly as a writer.
I mean, did your power output jump up?
Are you not performing?
Which is the big question.
And then I can train more, which yeah, my power is going.
So that's an
upside.
And we'll talk about that in just a second here.
So what's that fourth question.
His fourth question.
Should I try and use both glutes and thigh muscles or, well, that occur naturally.
It occurs naturally already.
So it's just that.
And like we said, the conscious alteration of a change is going
to make things difficult and that might not pay off in terms.
Performance benefit.
Um, and if you are going to address these and I do recommend that people
absolutely get their glutes firing.
I mean, whether or not you're using them to drive the pedals or simply
to stabilize your torso on the bike.
So you have better power transfer so that when you move in and out of the saddle,
you're more coordinated so that you can just basically ride your bike better here.
You're you're more balanced.
Your body's more.
For that reason alone.
I definitely recommend doing this and that, but I recommend doing it.
The strength training.
I mean, you have to do activation exercises where you get in touch
with the muscle, then you do strengthening exercises, which
actually grows the muscles capacity.
Um, and then just let hate your handle.
The rest don't coax your pedal stroke into doing anything.
It didn't already do.
Just make all the muscles capable of working to a fuller
extent and ride your bike.
Yeah.
Uh, so I, I think another thing that people perhaps misunderstand is that.
The glue is the one that pushes the power.
And that's the one that's really makes you a powerful
site.
If you look at, look at what happens when you push down on a pedal,
that's largely knee extension that's, that's so driven by the quads.
The glutes do fold into it, and they fold in at about 12 o'clock
down to four o'clock, but it's not a powerful range of motion for them.
You're still getting so much of what creates power, what puts
those Watts on the power meter.
Th through your quadriceps.
I mean, just ask yourself how tired your quads are at the
end, relative to your glutes.
Even with train glutes, that fire, even with someone constantly trying to
activate those glutes, getting out of the saddle and really extending their hips.
It's still still a quadrivium
movement.
I've mentioned this plenty of times that we have a post in the forum about it, uh,
about how I am managing my knee issues.
You can go on.
A bunch of people that have chimed in talks about things that have helped them.
But I worked with Dr.
Jayda Shari out of rebound physical therapy up in bend Oregon.
And he is, um, he's a, he's a guru of sorts with top athletes and runners,
especially in managing any sort of imbalances and problems that they have.
And, uh, he was just saying like, look, man, I want your glutes
to work, but I don't want that.
The work because they need to drive the pedals.
He's like, I want them to work because they need to stabilize
things.
And that's it.
I mean, the whole glute complex, the, the Maximus medius and minimus.
They're very much about stabilization.
I mean, less so with the Maximus, that's definitely about hip extension
and movement, but the other two muscles are very much about making
your, your knee track while keeping.
Yeah, in its place, keeping your pelvis situated and basically providing stability
for the muscles that do that prime movers, which to some extent are the glutes, but
to a far greater extent are the quads.
Yeah.
And he said, you know, you've spent years where your glutes are
doing that job and said, or sorry, or your quads are doing that job.
Yeah.
It's a compensation with muscles that aren't supposed to be doing.
What the glutes, the inactive glutes aren't
doing.
Yes.
I, you know, I have like four different quadricep muscles and
because things aren't stable, you've got them pulling unevenly.
Cause they're trying to stabilize things as you're pedaling.
Pulls the knee cap crooked and makes tracking issues happen.
Plenty of things.
And for that reason, yes, absolutely train your glutes.
But if you're looking for a more strong or for a stronger pedal stroke, any
improvement you get with more active glutes, I, I'm not entirely sure it will
be because the glutes are stronger so much as they're doing their job better.
Yeah.
I completely agree.
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