The last few years we’ve seen a growing interest in strength training for cyclists, particularly by those over 50. What are some best practices?
There are many general health benefits that come from regular, year-round strength training for your average “Joe” and “Jane,” but many of these benefits prove incredibly useful for those of us who prefer to be up on 2 wheels for our fitness and enjoyment.
But while this shifting interest into strength training has the potential to be a complete game changer for some, due to poor information and practices, the majority are being led down a path to being unnecessarily sore, as well as opening themselves up to huge increases in risk of injury.
This months article is an excerpt from my new International Best-Seller Lift Heavy Sh*t! Intelligent Strength Training for Masters Cyclists” which I hope will help you to get better, safer, and much more quality returns on your time and effort invested into strength training.
The “Common Knowledge” Myth: Targeting Muscle Groups for Cyclists
For many years, it has been mistakenly believed that in order to maximize your cycling abilities, it’s important to focus mostly on specific muscle groups during strength training sessions that work when you’re riding your bike. The muscles that have often been focused on include:
- Quadriceps
- Hamstrings
- Glutes
- Calves
- Core Muscles
And for the more forward-thinking folks, they’ll also consider:
While this segmented, muscle by muscle approach to movement seems like a good idea, it actually misses a vital and very basic keystone of human movement:
Nothing moves by itself.
The 3 Jobs of a Muscle
In fact, a muscle has 3 jobs in the body:
- To protect a joint from injury
- To stabilize a joint while an adjacent joint moves
- To move a joint
Every skeletal muscle of the body will work in this fashion, and following this order of operation.
Muscles will tighten to project a joint from injury, due to either instability or a lack of balance/tuning through the system of movement. Muscles will also tighten if a muscle further up or down in the system is weak or otherwise out of place and unable to do their job appropriately. We’ll get into that a bit more in Chapter 6.
This notion of muscle by muscle workouts came from the Western approach to training and fitness, which was heavily influenced, if not led, by the bodybuilding world.
While these approaches do not work well when one is seeking to build better athletic performances or towards longevity and vitality in their lives, they were a necessary step in evolution of strength training for the masses in Western culture to help us add strength training into the conversation about health.
The likes of Jack LaLane, Arnold Schwartzenneger, and Fred Hatfield helped to spread the gospel of strength training. As such, much of the information and approaches we have learned as a society in the west are based on bodybuilding.
There is nothing inherently wrong with body building. It is an incredibly challenging, and oftentimes fun, approach to pushing one’s muscles to grow.
But it is about as far from performance and longevity training as one can get.
Having met and spent considerable time with former IFBB Bodybuilding professionals and “regular gym goers,” I can tell you beyond a shadow of doubt, that bodybuilding unequivocally does more to break the body down in the long run, than build it up.
Knee, hip, and shoulder replacements are very common, as bodybuilders look to maximize strain on the muscles themselves, often at the sacrifice of safe and efficient mechanics.
But if you’re seeking to improve your health, increase your ability to move well for many years, gain strength, and boost your performance in any sport, you must change your focus from training muscles to training movements. . . And learning to move well.
Meet The Unknown Workhorse of Movement: The Fascia
Training movements allow you to target the all-important and ever-present tissue called the Fascia. While we are only recently beginning to understand how integral and intertwined fascia is in the human body (it’s much like a spiderweb that runs through each and every muscle in your body), we have come a relatively long way in a short time.
If fascia sounds familiar, it’s probably because since the early 2000’s we’ve had many runners and triathletes talk about the Plantar Fascia, as these populations have often had issues with this area. But the fascia does not act in a part to part or muscle to muscle way. Fascia runs in what are often referred to as “lines” or “meridians” in the body, connecting muscles and areas which to the average Joe doesn’t believe have any connection to each other.
Let’s look at an example:
Going with the Plantar Fascia, which is on the bottom side of your foot, that fascia is actually a part of a line that runs up the backside of your body, through the calves, hamstrings, hip rotators, your lower back, your trapezius (mid-back muscles) up your neck and the backside of your head, and attaches at the muscles that move your eyebrows!
It is all one continuous system which works together and affects one another. And that is just one of several lines of fascia in your body!
Another pair of fascial lines which greatly affects us as cyclist are the “Anterior Oblique Sling” and “Posterior Oblique Sling”. These fascial slings act as force transferring systems.
These two slings work in chorus with each other to provide core stability (along with other fascial slings in the body) by compressing the pelvis, which is made up of 3 bones (the Sacrum and the two iliac bones {Ileum}) to allow you to produce power and movement from the hip.
It’s not your leg muscles that allow you to produce power down to the pedals from the hip, it is the fascial system working together as a part of whole-body effort to create stiffness where you need it in the right amounts, so that you can get movement.
The above mentioned Anterior Fascial Sling (on one side) includes the muscles of your transverse abdominis (TVA), internal and external obliques on the one side (those muscles under the “love handles”), and the pectorals (chest muscles) on the opposite side.
The Posterior Fascial Sling (on one side) includes one of your hamstring muscles (bicep femoris), the same side glute max (your big outer butt muscle), and the other side latissimus dorsi (that big V shaped muscle Arnold is famous for).
These fascial lines run all through your body, and tie your upper body and lower body together in an inseparable fashion, which requires a more holistic view of human movement in order to better prepare the body for sport and performance.
Hopefully now you understand why ignoring your upper body and/or treating it as an afterthought in your strength training is a huge, massive mistake, just as looking at each muscle as a singular entity is selling you up the strength training and cycling river without a paddle.
But if we shouldn’t look at our strength training in a muscle by muscle fashion, how should you break down your workouts?
By movements.
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