despite having ridden for quite a few years now there are some bad habits that i have while riding
a bike that i still find myself slipping into i met up with my friend coach ken elite cyclist
and professional cycling coach for a ride catch up and to discuss why these habits should be avoided
i've got this special thing that i do when someone gets a puncture what's that i stand and film them
you can't help yeah this is helping can you help by telling me if this is the right kind of tube
yeah yeah probably okay first bad habit is really relevant because you're eating a mug of soup
yeah bad cycling habit number one not eating on bike rides
that whole mindset of oh i can get through i know i'm doing going going really well when
i can do five hours with only water i don't need any food that's when i know i'm going really well
where actually they're doing five hours with no water it's taking them four days
to recover from it and they can't sprint it's not a good thing to be getting through rides
without needing any food you should be fueling it helps your recovery it helps you ride hard
and it'll be way better for your long-term progression if you actually eat during your
bike rides this is such a easy thing to slip into even when you're an experienced rider though
it almost more so if you're an experienced rider yeah because you get complacent the fitter you are
kind of the more you can get away with not eating yeah exactly the trap people fall into
is that they can finish the ride without eating so therefore they think they don't need to eat
but finishing a ride completely depleted of all energy it's not good for you if you just
keep topped up with carbs all the way through the ride you give your body the energy it needs
whilst it needs it and you don't get super hungry after the ride you don't binge the rest of the
day and you can just eat like a normal person when you're off the bike and you'll recover much faster
it's much better for your long-term progression if you just eat a little bit throughout your training
it doesn't have to be super precise just always be eating in little bits little enough and whilst
you're riding rather than actively trying to pursue how far you can go without eating
because it's not good for you before you're hungry or when you feel a bit you shouldn't
be getting hungry it's almost too late so you heard him take a cup of soup on your ride
he came from above how is he doing that oh my god number two of bad cycling habits not surfing
wheels properly there's a huge huge benefit to being sat in someone's draft or just riding behind
them when you're on a ride the bigger the group the easier it is to hide from the wind and uh it's
used all the time in racing to save energy right sitting in the wheels you can save a 25 to 30
of the energy it takes to keep yourself going forwards so the more you can find opportunities to
sit behind people rather than out to the side or feel like you need to be riding on the front all
the time the more energy you can save and you can ride a lot further have a lot easier time of it um
and and get where you want to be without absolutely slogging yourself all the time
don't don't be afraid to sit on the wheels but i think one of the things we wanted to cover was you
need to be quite close to the wheel in front of you but not so close to your crossing over
because that is a really bad habit crossing wheels of the person in front of you
and causing a potentially dangerous situation for everyone if you get so close to that rider that
with one flick of the wheel from them they'd knock you off your bike you're going to cause a problem
for everyone in the group so you want to be within a meter of the person in front of you but not so
close that there's an overlap when you see people hanging three four five meters back just a bit
worried about getting too close they're losing a lot of that benefit that comes from sitting in
the wheels and saving energy so you need to be confident enough to get in there and be within
that kind of one meter of the the rider in front of you we were chatting about this off camera and
talking about the wattage saving instead of thinking about it in terms of percentages
and i think it really demonstrates how how much energy you're saving yeah well saving 25
of your energy doesn't really mean a lot until you say right if you're riding on the front at 400
watts person behind is doing 300 watts and that's a much more sustainable pace for a lot of people
400 watts is not very sustainable for many people at all for very long 300 watts you can do for a
hell of a lot longer so the more time you can put yourself in that situation not having to do
the 400 watts on the front the better the bike is going to be the further you'll go easier
it'll be more energy you'll have at the end to attack to win to drop everyone whatever it is
you're trying to do get the richmond park kom yeah yeah of course all the biggest challenges
next bad habit that i'm really guilty of is not being consistent with my rides particularly when
i'm training to try and get faster this one is more geared towards your performance-based cyclist
so if you're if you're looking to get faster well listen to this it's another trap that i see people
fall into quite often that's thinking that one long ride per week is as good as five little rides
per week because everyone's so focused on our did a hundred miles ah do five hours we'll focus
on that one big ride that they ride so hard on it and go so deep that they're so tired for the rest
of the week that they don't do much riding at all so you're far better off doing it little and often
five one hour rides arguably are better than one five hour ride per week because you're
telling your body to get fitter five times per week then not just once per week and you've
given it such a big signal for adaptation that you're wrecked for the next seven days
so in my opinion consistency is absolutely key so i'd much rather people who are doing little
and often riding four or five times per week even if that means sacrificing the big five hour ride
or even the three-hour ride um if you can get more quality in throughout the course of the week um
you're far better off doing it that way than just saving it all up will there be a risk of
losing that tolerance to do a longer ride because you haven't had the time in the saddle it is a
good thing to to get used to being out for a long time but i think that comes more from um have it
once you've done it a few times you know your position is good you know how much you need
to fuel you know you can do a long ride you don't need then to do that long ride every time in order
to develop fitness you don't need to go further on the next time in order to get more fitness you
can build up overall training volume much more easily by breaking it out into multiple rides
over the course of the week rather than saving it off one big hit out at the weekend because
you're less tired overall you can do more hours if you do an hour and a quarter five days a week
that's six and a bit out what would that be six and a quarter hours rather than one five hour
ride a week that's five hours so arguably you've done more training volume so you'll get fitter
on your one and a quarter hour rides than you would on a five hour ride
there is something to be said for every now and again you you need to go for a long ride
to understand your pacing and fueling needs and whether your your neck starts hurting after two
hours or you say comfortable contact points and getting used to yeah yeah exactly so like oh my
my shoes and my cleat setup are fine for one hour but after two hours i've got hot spots i'm going
numb and getting numb hands those kind of things are sort of separate performance and i'm coming
from the angle of you've already sorted those things out yeah you already understand that you
can get through a five hour ride with that setup i'm saying don't save up all your training hours
throughout the week just for that one big ride because you think it's all about the big ride it's
not it's it's about overall volume and consistency not just how far you can go in one day we've got
his and hers super mugs is that a bad habit you need to break no but yours is so just saying
this next one's for you ken yeah this is about worse than me
i said this is not one that i do but it's one that i see a lot
it's riding in the gutter this is more from like a safety things you should be doing on
the bike um perspective if you ride too far to the left and you're riding in the gutter right
in the side of the road because you feel like you want to give the cars behind you space to overtake
you're almost inviting them through and encouraging them to do a close pass and overtake
you without sufficient room if you look at what the highway code says it suggests you should be
on secondary position around about a meter away from the curb unless it's a narrow or busy road
or you're doing less than 10 miles an hour and if you position yourself out just a little bit
it forces drivers to actively overtake you so they have to think about is it a safe time to overtake
and yes it'll slow them down and it might upset them a little bit but if you take that defensive
position and you're riding everyone's a lot safer for it there's a risk of upsetting people
but if everybody stays alive that's the best thing to do yeah it's it's more important for you to
ride defensively and do the right thing than it is to not upset anyone because you're trying to get
out of the way and ride in the gutter that that is a bad habit that i see a lot of people fall into
and it's also combined with waving cars through so i'd ah there's someone behind me i feel a bit
guilty that i'm slowing the car down i'm going to wave them through because i think it's safe to
overtake and you're almost assuming liability for their bad overtake if you've waived them through
so i i think that's a really bad habit to avoid if you're really bothered about slowing the car down
find a place that it's safe to pull over and just get off the road and get out of the way
and wait till it's clear and start riding again don't be waving people through
because it just they'll just overtake that and won't think about it and then it'll be on a corner
and there'll be someone coming the other way and as a cyclist you're never going to win the fight
when people are driving two-ton metal boxes and they've got seat belts and
airbags and and you haven't you've got a few millimeters of lycra
and a little helmet they're always going to win so riding defensively even though it upsets a
few car drivers is always the best thing to do as long as you're within the limits of the
highway code that's what you should be doing rather than trying to let people squeeze by
half wheeling some of you guys might have heard of this but don't know what it means
um you see it all the time when you're out and about riding with other people
i do it on purpose sometimes with people that you want to make sure know you're faster than them
yeah or i just want to make them suffer yeah like the astana team yeah the yeah you're all the way
can you give a brief explanation of what half wheeling is yeah yeah half wheeling so if you
if you're riding in a group this is generally happens when you're riding two abreast
and it'll be one person just pushing the pace on just a little bit and forcing the other person
to catch up so that they're alongside them it just always puts one person in a slightly uncomfortable
position because they're going just a bit faster than they want to and it becomes really annoying
if you're always having to ride a little bit harder than you want to ride because the person
next to you is trying to edge in front the whole time as soon as they catch up you then go and get
yeah yeah and you get into this like vicious cycle of going faster and faster and faster
because you always want to be the person at the front edging forward a little bit and it just
like ends up in people getting annoyed so it is a legit bad habit it's also going to
be really annoying for the people riding behind you as well like generally this happens on group
rides when every when people want to prove they're the strongest rider in the group
um and it's just a miserable experience and but everyone by the end it's so easy to fall into
that trap i'm guilty of it i've done it all the time yeah because i've been on group rides where
there's like guys who are pro or x pro and i end up on the front with them and i'm like well i'm
gonna give this a nudge i'm gonna half wheel this x-pro come on and all of a sudden we've done 10
minutes at 400 watts trying to pace the crap out of each other on the front and everyone behind is
going [ __ ] it slow down well they're gone yeah yeah so i hope some of that information was useful
and will help you avoid developing some bad habits a big thanks to ken for helping out with today's
video he is a cycling coach and is available for hire so if you're interested in getting
a bit faster on your bike and taking steps to pursue the sport in a slightly more serious way
he's available and i'll put the information to contact him down below all of the footage with
ken today was actually shot a couple of weeks ago before the second lockdown and there's
actually one more video to come featuring him which i'll release in the next week or so as
usual thank you so much for watching please like comment and subscribe and i'll see you guys soon