CanadianBiker32

question can one get a decent strong corewithout doing situps or leg raises?

doing all other types of workouts for core?

as i get dizzy on situpsbut good on everything else

Carbonfiberboy 

Situps not good, leg raises good. I like these because they seem especially cycling-targeted. They hit the hip flexors and lower abs. Many variations on this theme.

wolfchild

No sit ups, no leg raises, no abs specific training for me...I use kettlebell exercises to train my core.

rubiksoval

I ride my bike and do other things outside. Keeps my core quite strong.

ARider2

I do leg raises instead of sit ups because I feel it isolates the abdominal muscles better and it also strengthens the hip joints. It also does a good job of strengthening my core and it is easier on my back.

Greenhil

Planks (ugh) or crunches, which in my experience don’t bring up the back issues that sit-ups do. I’ve found crunches with kettlebells work well.

Trakhak

It may be possible that you can forgo situps and such and still do fine. I've been a strict cycling monoathlete for over 50 of my nearly 70 years. I've never done stretching, yoga, weights, running, etc., etc. The state of my neglected "core" (whatever that is) has never suffered as a consequence in any way that I can detect. The last time I saw a doctor, about 7 years ago or thereabouts, he told me that I'm healthier than 99.999 percent of people my age.

Based on my experience, I think that cycling (at least, doing 10 hours or more per week at ex-bike-racer training level) is more broadly beneficial than many people believe it to be. (I have wished at times that my arms weren't quite so pipe-stem-like, but not enough to do anything about it.)

Road Fan

Hmm, I've noticed the same thing - in higher efforts where I pull on the bars, seated or standing, it's my abs that enable my connection to the bars to add to the force delivered by my legs, beyond the application of dead weight. I also think this would be a consequence of the "muscle tension workout" Carbonfiberboy talked about in a recent Polarized threads - 50/11, 50 rpm, for numerous minutes. A few years ago Mrs. Road Fan and I went out on "The Hills of Ann Arbor" route, and that pedaling technique got my lardy butt up the hills, but not in a gear anything like a 50/11!!! For my Trek at the time it was more like 39/34 on 700c wheels.

Hondo Gravel

Trap bar deadlifts and dumbbell squats hits the core. No direct ab work. Hernia repair area doesn’t like it lol.

gregf83 

I think if I weighed 65kg and had an FTP of 375+W I'd need a stronger core but, sadly, my core has always been strong enough without supplemental exercise. I've had my legs get tired/sore or start panting while riding but don't recall my core ever getting fatigued or my back getting sore so I don't think extra exercises targeted at the core would help much.

rubiksoval

Exactly. It just isn't an issue unless there's actual pain or weakness. Not even at 6w/kg type of fitness.

And I'd surmise for the vast majority, doing actual riding that focuses on aerobic gains will improve performance significantly more than any amount of core work. You can get all of the extra body strength necessary for your riding simply by actually riding.

Carbonfiberboy 

That's certainly true. However, I think it's interesting to ride hard, see what's sore the next day, and maybe train those sore muscles on not-hard days. Then on hard days maybe I'll have more endurance. I don't see a rationale for not doing that other than lack of time and specificity is quicker. I've always been able to find both pain and weakness on long hard rides. If I don't, I'm not doing it right. I try to keep the memory of riding through that pain alive when I'm training.

For instance, I noticed that today my lats are sore after a tough roller workout yesterday. My lats?? They wouldn't be if gyms weren't closed and I was still doing lat work. Never had sore lats before just from riding my bike. I do have dumbbells and a bench. Maybe I'll add a couple sets of one-arm raises or pullovers. The best chest work I've found is breathing deep and hard for a long time, i.e. ride! My morning pushups are good for my triceps and having more comfortable arms. On group rides, I always see folks shaking out their arms. Huh. Must not train them, eh? Yeah, so train what hurts.

Those seated leg raises shown above did make my hip flexors stronger so that I was more comfortable on long endurance spins. I don't seem to need them anymore though - I guess I've corrected that imbalance.

Trakhak

That's certainly one approach. Another approach (mine) is to ride hard, see what's sore the next day, and then do whatever rides I would have done anyway for the next few rides. Surprise! The soreness goes away. (Same thing for colds and flu---I just stay home and wait it out. Although I might still have some aspirin around somewhere. Expired by now, no doubt.)

Our different approaches clearly work for each of us. Mine probably reflects my having started bike racing in Connecticut in the mid-'60s. Back then, the only coaches I ever encountered were track-and-field and football guys. The state of the art at the time was telling players to train their bodies to do without water on long runs while taking salt tablets to replenish what had been sweated out. No bike coaching, obviously. Of the very few people who were racing bikes in New Haven back then (and I knew all 10 or 12 of them), the only guys who seemed to know what they were doing were racing for Yale. (Several of those were ex-military graduate students sharing a couple of dorm rooms and learning Mandarin. I wonder what that was about.)

rubiksoval

That's interesting. I don't really get sore after rides anymore. I get deep-down fatigue, and I get to the point where my legs feel like blocks of wood, but nothing like the DOMS I get if I were to go sprint down the street or go hiking or carry a bunch of stuff around all day (things I'm not used to).

But even when I first started riding, I can't ever in my life think of a time when my core was sore. Not even in mountain biking. Hands would be sore, and whatever body part hit a tree or something, but nothing in my torso.

rubiksoval

Next time just try some powercranks.

gregf83 

I think if you're able to ride year round your core will adapt to what it needs to. For the past 13 yrs I've been pretty consistent at 500-600 hrs/yr with at most a couple weeks off for various reasons. I used to get a tired/sore back at the start of Ice Hockey season but that was because there was a sharp transition from no skating to playing a couple times a week. If you don't cycle or cycle significantly less in the winter then perhaps you might get a sore back when ramping up but I don't see it happening if you ride steadily during the year.

Carbonfiberboy 

I'm trying to remember that far back . .. I do distinctly remember in my teens and early 20s going on ski vacations and only being sore the first three days, then not again the rest of the season. I didn't start bike training until I was 50, but I must have started hitting the gym in my late 50s for some reason, probably trying not to get dropped on every hill or maybe not cramping anymore when chasing the fast boys up the zillionth hill of the day. Worked though.

I've been riding almost every day since mid-September but I was starting from about zero after not riding all summer due to saddle sore caused sciatica. So every week is a little harder except for easy weeks and also a little different. My legs and lats are a little sore today because yesterday was my 2nd attempt at an hour of power. Legs and HR were OK but I couldn't get my breathing regulated. I was breathing too much and hyperventilated before I even got to 30'.

Core: I agree except for now my back gets sore, which might be because of no gym + age. Riding makes it less sore, so that's good. I've never done these long roller rides before - I used to never ride them for more than an hour. But like they say, rollers make you smooth because there's no bike momentum like on the road. One has to supply pedal force all the way around the circle, so my hip flexors took a while to get conditioned to 2 hours of that.

I probably wouldn't notice Powercranks, I'm already there. Way back when, there was that rider who did extensive Powercrank testing and found they didn't do anything. His article was used by Powercrank opponents to poo-poo them. I don't think anyone noticed that the reason they didn't help this rider was because he had already been pedaling as though he were using them for a long time. So there's that. On long rides, I work hard at pedaling with a force just below the pain threshold. The way to do that is to never contract any one muscle all that much, yet still get up the road at 18. So reducing peak pedal force is a big deal. I've been working on that for a long time.

The kinda crazy thing is that I was by far the best sprinter in our group of 100 or so riders, even though I was 10 years older than most of them. I tried to coach a couple of them who wanted to get faster on hill sprints, but they couldn't pull up hard enough, while I could lift the back wheel off the road if I wasn't careful. I still don't really understand. It seems like one could just push down harder, but maybe most road cyclists don't have the quad strength to equal pushing down and pulling up at the same time?

Carbonfiberboy 

I remember those days when we were forbidden to drink during a game. Gave you cramps, dontcha know?

The students learning Mandarin were heading for one of the intelligence paths. I can still speak a little Czech from back when "they" had 300 tank divisions just a few days march from the Rhine. Not the Czechs of course, that endlessly conquered country. Gives one humility and a dark sense of humor.

Toespeas

there are more than enough videos on youtube to gather a routine from !

rubiksoval

You definitely notice powercranks. Using the computrainer scantron things, I always had a very good pedal stroke, but I couldn't use them more than 3 minutes consecutively the first couple of rides.

They are "poo-pooed" because the claims made for them are absolutely ludicrous, and at the end of the day the only thing they make you better at are riding powercranks. They're just an absolute gimmick and completely pointless. Only good thing about them was that I was able to sell mine for $!50 more than I bought them!

But as with everything, what's old is now new. https://bikerumor.com/2021/02/15/spo...independently/

Carbonfiberboy 

You're probably right. I can feel my heelcups and shoe uppers on the upstroke, but that's not lifting the weight of a powercrank, just my leg. I don't think I'd do better if I lifted any harder - or I would. The weird thing to me is that they still ebay for $300-$700. Lot of money for worthless junk . . .I'd try a set for $100.

But you did OK on them eventually? Except that they didn't improve your power or endurance?

What's that scantron? It doesn't google. My wife has a computtrainer, older model, but no electronics attached other than its head unit. I always wanted to see a polar graph of my pedaling.

Have a look at this, 2:06-2:13. I've been fascinated by the identical pedaling of these riders. They both lift the toe on the backstroke. I've tried and tried to do that at high power, and I just can't for more than a few strokes, though it's obviously better to enter the power stroke early, 11:00, with the toe well up. Comment please?

Yeah, that kind of thing engages the core alright.

rubiksoval

I got to where I could ride them for 30 minutes or so, but to what end, I never figured out. There was zero difference when I got back on my bike.

I guess it's called a spin scan. Scantron are those bubble sheets you take tests on in school Woops! It was something that showed where you were delivering power throughout the pedal stroke; essentially whether you unweighted the up leg as much or not (there is generally not significant differences here, apparently, but still some more efficient than others).

Pedaling is pedaling and it, like cadence, varies on preference, seat height, heel extension, etc. Smashing down is where the power comes from. Lifting toes on the backstroke is about one of the last things I'd think about for my own riding, though I sit a bit lower than most and keep my foot more horizontal through the bottom and top.

Just like Basso, there's nothing I care about in regards to Armstrong and Pantani, personally. Their era is over and was so egregiously f'ed up that I don't think much of anything is applicable, especially what they did in training or racing.

Carbonfiberboy 

Yeah, some experiments show favorable results, others not so much.

I was really interested that they pedaled identically, coming from completely different traditions. They lift that toe to start the power stroke earlier, like 11:00 and then pull through the bottom and another maybe 20° with that heel cup. Putting more degrees into the power stroke seems helpful to me. Those slo-mo Ironwoman videos (not dopers) I've posted show the same pedaling extension of power stroke, though it's hard to see it's the same because of the body rotation on the tri-bike. I guess if I want to copy that, I have to train for it, like anything else.

I thought the most interesting aspects of the modern sports drugging was how steroids increased recovery ability - pretty obvious on stage races who stayed strong evenly day after day. The fad for high cadence was based on EPO. We've always known that folks who TT at high cadence had big VO2max numbers. EPO accentuated that. I still shake my head at those old Lance standing attacks. Oh sure, anyone could train to do that. Not. OTOH, those folks brought in some new technology other than doping, probably through the money that was involved with the doped riders' fame. I still ride the same frame model on which Lance won the '99 tour, not the same size though.

There was an article, I think in Outside, by a journalist who doped. He went to an unnamed doctor and said I'm a sports journalist and amateur athlete and I want to find out what happens to these pros who dope. And I have an expense account. So the doctor gradually introduced him to performance-enhancing drugs, one at a time. The journalist couldn't believe how fast and strong he got. IIRC, like $20k in 6 months for just the drugs. So when we hear of amateurs doping, it's just nuts in terms of ROI. Ego crazed folks.

Iride01 

Are you perhaps talking about the guy that did this? https://www.netflix.com/title/80168079

It was sort of fascinating to watch and get a slight intro to a facet of the doping world

Carbonfiberboy 

I don't think so. This journalist was more about seeing what doping could do and telling his readers about it, so folks could better understand the effects it had on those who participated in it. Icarus looks like an interesting film.