Learn the secret to smashing your mates!
- Learn how to ride biomechanically correctly. Yes, that means you will ride faster, harder for longer!
- Learn how to identify potential injury triggers. Say goodbye to neck, knee and back problems!
When your bike is set up correctly and you engage your stabiliser muscle groups you are working as God (who is a cyclist of course!) intended. This means that you don’t overuse your already strong muscles (outer quads, hip flexors, upper traps) and instead draw power from the most biomechanically suitable muscles (glutes, inner quads, hamstrings, soleus).
As the great Lance Armstrong, Gordon Walker and many others attest, core stability is the absolute key to transmitting every once of power through to the bike.
Through the COREfIt® Cycling programme you will be taught exactly how to get your body working with the bike to mould you into the ultimate hill climber, sprinter or time trialer.
Traditional Cycling Injuries/Pain
a. Cyclists’ Knee – also aka – Patellafemoral Syndrome. Because cyclists are fixed in hip flexion the buttocks are in a very poor position to aid the knee tracking, so your ITB gets very tight, and pulls the patella out of alignment.
b. Neck: the head is heavy, combined with the weight of a helmet and poor shoulder positioning, the cervical vertebrae and surrounding muscles have to work hard to hold it all together.
c. Groin: no glutes firing equals overuse of the short inner thigh muscles (adductors) to compensate, creating load around the groin.
d. Lower Back: if you have poor core muscles, as the pedals push forward and down, the opposition force translates straight into the lumbar spine – particularly when climbing.
How we help
Let us teach you how to get your technique right and not only will you be injury free, but also hugely more powerful on the bike. Specifically we will:
a. Work proactively to get balance between outer and inner quads (Rectus Femorus and VMO) as well as TEACHING those glutes to fire when the foot is at the top of the stroke – thereby unloading your ITB, thereby unloading your knee.
b. Get as much TONE as possible in the mid- and lower-trapezius muscles, that will hold the shoulders in a better position so that your Upper Trapezius muscles don’t have to over work and load up the cervical spine .
c. Protect your groin: Step1: teach the glutes to fire in their shortest, most powerful position, Step2: teach the glutes to pull the leg back into extension keeping your deep abdominals on Step3: teach your glutes to work with the hip flexed (ie: top of the phase) without the hamstrings having to do all the work.
d. Release off your deep back muscles (Quadratus Lumborum) so that your lower back can move, then get AS MUCH TONE AS POSSIBLE in your ‘core’ muscles (Transversus Abdominus, Pelvic Floor and Multifidus) to support the spine under heavy cycling loads.
Your COREfit® Cycling Programme
First up we get you on your bike and fit it to your personal measurements. This sets your body up for maximum power output straight away. We then train you to identify the correct muscles to recruit for a range of conditions – hill climbing, sprinting, time trialling, endurance etc.
Finally we train these muscles to work outside their comfort zone, making you a stronger, more efficient, more powerful rider. Also, very importantly we also train you to understand how and why common cycling injuries happen and how to prevent them.