drmweaver2

stretching your hamstrings is fairly easy if you think about it. Every time you walk up or down stairs, stop for a minute on the stairs and stand with your heels below the balls of your feet. Slowly put your weight towards the heels - hold on for balance if you need to. Stretch for about 20-30 secs.

A second way, take 3 scraps of wood, make an incline ramp a bit longer than your feet are and stand on it or sit with your feet on it - toes above your heels. I do this while washing the dishes in the sink, shaving, brushing my teeth, etc. I also sit at my desk with my feet on the incline platform - painless and not intrusive at all. The key is to have the incline at a level that strains but doesn't pain you - most people use between 15 and 30 degrees. (Mine is about 22.)

Neil_B

No, it's not.

Half of those exercises are the same ones I was taught during physical therapy for my back. Even 'healthy' people have trouble with some of them at first. Keep at them, a few minutes every other day, and you should feel improvement after the first week or so. Don't overdo it on any of them, but spend a few minutes on a handful.

And John, if I can do it, anybody can do it.

john423

Is that all you were doing during this period? I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate the stretches into my weightlifting/cardio thing. "Every other day" is quite helpful. I could probably do weightlifting one day, then cardio/stretching the next, for a while. Or I could do the stretching at home. I think I need to keep my butt off the road bike until I do some core strengthening and talk to the guy at the LBS about back comfort tweaks.

By the way, I did the one you suggested earlier where you put your feet on something high (I used a large step at the gym, you suggested an exercise ball) and then rose my butt up from the floor, and it was excruciating. That's going into this core rotation. Thanks

Neil_B

It shouldn't be painful. That either means you have a problem of some kind or are doing them wrong.

I did stretches every time I went to the gym. These are just to tone the muscles. Nothing more.

Neil_B

I missed part of your question. I was doing lifting and legwork under certain restrictions - no lifting behind my head, no squats, etc. Stretching was added to that.

boneshake

Dump them then.

Get the bike adjusted right.

Ride different roads.

Again, dump the pedals. A good alternative is the Mt. Zefal Half Toe Clip

See above.
Again, you need to adjust it to fit right. Get a higher stem or whatever if necessary, or an adjustable one.

I didn't read the thread first but I'm sure most of this has been said before. But I couldn't resist.
There's just nothing to really like about the experience. Did anyone else have this same reaction, and if so, how did you handle it?

I'd say I have two options at this point:

1. Throw even more money into this black hole moneypit and can the clip-in pedals and put on some regular, I can wear tennis shoes pedals. Also, get a saddle that isn't a 2x4 in the barest of disguises.
2. Sell the bike for a considerable loss.

I know I need to give it more time, but damn, I'm aggravated at the whole thing. I got a bike in the first place to save my aging car, not put more miles on it driving to out-of-the-way places so I don't get run over riding the bike. I dunno what I was thinking, but I wasn't thinking clearly.[/QUOTE]

boneshake

I use these. No special shoes, cheap, hold your toe in the right spot, no strap:

https://www.cambriabike.com/shopexd.a...m=051981001100

eddubal

I checked out your link, and it seems that they are geared toward someone who has been cycling much longer. Many of the exercises listed are what many books consider "Intermediate" or advanced exercises. In other words for someone who has been strength training for about a year or more. It really sounds like you need to find a beginner routine.

I'm coming up on my first anniversary for exercise. I was very sedentary before that and even though I wasn't very overweight, I wasn't close to slim. I started off on an indoor exercise bike and in a more upright position, and soon realized that I needed to do more than just cycle and work the lower body. I then bought a set of adjustable dumbbells, a bench and looked for a book on strength training. I stumbled on a Men's Health book called " The Men's Health Home Workout Bible." It's not cycling oriented, but gives a great path to help with overall strength. It worked well for me.

I'm more of a lone wolf type so it seemed good. They also have a "... Gym Workout Bible" too if you want. As I read it, it really had some good advice for all levels of strength training as well as all budgets/types of equipment. I would highly recommend it. It has basic exercises as well as intermediate and advanced variations in there. I was actually surprised how fast I progressed using the sample workout that it provides.

I've bought several books on the subject, and tend to stay with the Men's Health series because of their reputation as a magazine as well as their tendency to nurture the novice, yet challenge those with more experience. A few other books that I have bought and used well are:

"The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises" by Adam Campbell
"The Body You Want in the Time That You Have" by Myatt Murphy
"Strength Training: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide to a Stronger, Sculpted Body" published by DK Publishing

Each have good ideas and have helped me in different ways. There are a few tips that they all cover that have helped. Any one of them can explain the concepts better, but I'll give a shot at simplified basics.

1. Work out on alternating days. You build muscle with rest, not activity. You get micro tears in the fibers by woking out hard. Resting lets them heal and rebuild a stronger muscle.

2. Cardio is needed as often as you can. You don't need to work it hard to keep your cardio health, but do a bit as often as you can. You can ride the same day as a strength workout session, but give it time, or don't expect to perform as well as you would otherwise.

3. Soreness is good, it means that you are working yourself hard. Sudden, sharp pain is bad as it usually means a major muscle strain or worse. Don't workout the specific muscle if it is still really sore when you are scheduled to workout next. It hasn't fully recovered and can cause regression. The books go into this a lot more.

4. Strength training seems to raise your metabolism for a couple of days, thus enhancing the body's ability to burn calories. All the books recommend that you lose no more than about 2lbs per week to be healthy and long term. Losing weight faster has resulted in poor nutrition as well as a higher probability of simply gaining it back.

5. Don't go on a diet. Change the way you eat. Be more aware of ingredients and their effect on your body. It's a total culinary lifestyle change. For me it's worked well. I actually don't miss much of what I used to eat regularly.

You might also want to talk to the personal trainer at your gym. Tell him/her about your goals and the issues that you've been having. It would be money well spent for the individual attention that you need. You only need 2-3 sessions to get you on you way, then you can have more sessions if you want as money and confidence level will allow/warrant. It sounds like you have a perfectly attainable goal in mind: To gain fitness and improve your ability to ride your bike. A trainer will easily be able to help you with that as well as help you choose a time frame. If you are seeing a trainer and haven't been satisfied with your current trainer, check around elsewhere. There is probably a good trainer nearby who can tailor a workout to your specific needs. Also make sure that you've brought up the issues that you are posting here.

Remember that the only person who is unable to improve his strength is the one that's dead. According to several of the books, even the elderly have been able to gain muscle by strength training. If they can, you can too. Hang in there. Start small and work your way up.

john423

I've been working out at various gyms now for about 7-plus years. I gots a handle on the strength training/diet side of the equasion (have lost more than 100 pounds twice). I'm not real sure how my core got so neglected (mainly because I never bothered working my abs directly and I guess I never picked up tons of back strength deadlifting). But I couldn't do the plank move for more than about 30 seconds without screaming.

So we're resetting all the rules - I still strength train, I just mainly use machines for the convenience factor of it all. And on my off days from strength training, I'm gonna try to do the core program I linked to above. I'd say I'm an intermediate lifter, and relatively intermediate on the bike - I don't have much road bike experience, but I've been a pretty faithful commuter for 15 months now. I did a 60-mile ride on my commuter bike a couple of months ago. So I'm not new at any of this. My core just needs improvement and I need more strength in my lower back. Plus I've always had tight hamstrings.

So the core work starts tomorrow. And I'm going to a Pilates class at the gym soon, what the hey.

Not a fan of personal trainers at all. Trust me, you hang around gyms for more than a couple of years and you'll see some head-shaking stuff.

Men's Health is a good resource. Pay particular attention to anything Alan Aragon says - he's a nutritional genius and one of my biggest nutritional/diet inspirations.

sstorkel

I built up quite a bit of core strength just by climbing and sprinting out of the saddle. And that's a lot less boring than doing planks and transverse planks...

chasm54

It's a long time since I posted in this thread. Congratulations on your persistence. I love road biking and I'd hate to see you abandon what to me is a great source of pleasure before you're absolutely sure it isn't for you. But in the final analysis, if you feel OK and safe riding in the traffic on a hybrid, but unsafe and not OK on a road bike, ride the hybrid. You can get just as much exercise, you just go a little slower, is all.

As for the quoted passage, working on a neglected core is just hard, there's no getting away from it.The exercises you linked to are great - I find the boat pose and the power bridge especially helpful, especially if in the latter you push your pelvis towards the ceiling as hard as you can - really engages the glutes and hamstrings. However, I'm surprised the list doesn't include the bicycle manouver, which is supposed to be the single most effective core exercise. The video gives a demonstration. Whether or not you want to continue road biking, give it a try. It works and despite being torture (just like the others!) you'll find you make quite rapid progress.

Finally, a thought about your preference for an upright riding position. I recently bought a new expedition touring bike. I won't recommend the builder to you, it cost a fortune and anyway, you'd have to have it shipped from England. However, he deliberately left the steerer longer than we thought I needed so that I could experiment, moving the stem up and down the steerer until after a few hundred miles I was confident I had the riding position dialled in. I have now, a month after buying the bike, had 35mm cut off the steerer to lower the bars to exactly where they suit me. Result - perfection.

My point is that forks generally come from the manufacturer with a long steerer, which would allow for the bars to be as high or higher than the saddle. It's the frame builder or the LBS that cuts the steerer, and on road bikes they generally cut them short deliberately to produce the aero roadie position. So whatever bike you buy next, talk to the LBS about whether when supplying it they can leave the steerer long and cut it shorter only after you've had the bike a while and are confident you know exactly how high you want the bars to be.

john423

Yeah, the bike started off in aero position before I flipped the stem. But boy, did that hurt my back.

See, I can't figure out if I could possibly take the aero roadie position if I would put enough work into core/back strengthening and put enough tiime into the bike, or whether I will ever reach the point where I can take it. I can't even take the bike now with the flipped stem.

This was a telltale sign - I went into the room where my gym has their spin classes yesterday and used a spin bike for an hour. To try to get an approximation of what I'm going through, I set the seat at the proper height and lowered the handlebars as low as they would go. The ride would just never end. I never got comfortable, I never got into a groove. Then for the last 10 minutes I indulged myself and sat up straight-backed. It was awesome, fantastic.

It's odd to be sitting here with a nice road bike and be thinking "maybe road biking is just not for me." But I'm not done yet. If the local road club has a group ride Sunday, I'm going. That would be very important in determining what happens next.

CraigB

I've seen these types of stretches used for calves and for achilles tendons, but never for hamstrings. I'm not a physiologist by any means, but it seems to me unlikely they'd have much of an effect on hamstrings.

drmweaver2

OOOOOPS.. you're right.. My bust... Must be the Louisiana cold freezing my brain. Sorry boys and girls.

Spudd

For hamstrings you can lie on your back and put one leg straight in the air, hold behind the knee and gently pull it toward you. Another way is to sit with your legs out straight in front of you, grab your legs behind the knees and gently pull yourself down towards your legs. As you get more flexible, you can move your hands down to your calves, ankles, or feet. But start with the knees.

drmweaver2

Here's a link to 4 hamstring stretches https://physicaltherapy.about.com/od/...ingstretch.htm

((trying to redeem myself slightly))

john423

There's an excellent hamstring stretch that involves a wall that's mentioned way earlier in this 2,000-page thread, I just gotta start doing it again. I used to do the stretch under my car before rides and people were constantly pulling over and saying "you OK?"

Did pilates today at the gym, there were times when I just couldn't do it and other times when it wasn't bad at all.

Then I went and had that heart-to-heart with the bike repair guy at the LBS where I bought the bike - he's been completely great through this whole thing and has really done a lot for me.

He encouraged me not to lose the road bike just yet, it's the best tool for my goals. He told me to keep up the core work and he'd do his best to make the bike more comfortable for me (says he wants to try a new stem and to try another basic refit) with the idea that I keep the old stem so when I get more comfortable with riding and develop a stronger core, I can go back to the old stem and eventually "unflip" the stem as I gain more experience and strength.

He said the No. 1 thing I needed on the bike was time riding, and whatever needed to be done to make that possible (by making the bike more comfortable) should be done.

seedsbelize 

After a couple months of these exercises, every other day, I no longer dread them, except the boat pose, which comes at the end, when my muscles are already tired. I enjoy the rest, and can definitely feel the difference when I'm riding. I started with 35 of the scissors kicks, and have now made it to 80. It can be done. I wouldn't have believed it myself, had I not experienced it first hand.

seedsbelize 

I use flat pedals and tennis shoes only. I have used spds and didn't like them. I ride 40-60 miles on a Sunday morning, maybe not as fast as I might otherwise, but since I ride alone, what difference does it make? It's really easy to get sucked into the cycling culture, which tells you you have to clip in, you have to ride a $1000 bike, you have to pay $200+ for a new wheelset, etc. None of that is true. I ride a '78 road bike, stock, that cost me $150. My helmet is NOS thriftstore, $4. $20 pedals and thrift store tennis shoes. I can get a brand new wheelset here, for under $40. Not top of the line, but at that price, who cares? I'm not racing on them. I'm riding for sheer enjoyment and utility. The point is to enjoy yourself. Find a way to be ecstatic when your on your bike, as is every cyclist I know. The rest will take care of itself.
You can do it, John.

john423

That's what I plan to do - to do those exercises every other day. I did a pilates class at the gym, which was OK, but a little too "softcore" for me. Some stuff was hard and some stuff was easy. I felt like the greater bit of it was wasted time, so I wanna do more specific stuff. Plus I can do the exercises at home if I wind up not going to the gym. I have to improve at this, it's huge in my development as a road bicyclist and huge in the achieving of my goals.

Yeah, I overdid it on the bike. I really wish I'd taken my time and found something used, but then I worried about the bike fitting correctly, etc. What's done is done. I just went with the flow on having to clip in, and I need lots more practice, but that's gotten better. I wanna try to keep up with biking groups, so I'm hoping to develop enough to do that. It's going to be slow going.

Thanks for the help and the words of encouragement. And no, I won't be paying $200 for wheels (crosses fingers).

seedsbelize 

I got sucked into all that when I got back into serious cycling, after ten years out of it. So much had changed. So I went with the flow, just as you did. I had an $800 bike, spd pedals, all the gear that goes with it. But you know, 30 years ago we all did just fine, without helmets, clipless pedals, and spandex. I rode thousands of miles simply not knowing any better. Now I swim upstream.

Wogster

Some of the advances come in real handy, some I think are more marketing oriented then anything else and on still others the jury is still out.

Here are examples, in the 1970's we didn't have padded spandex shorts, but we had inexpensive leather saddles, so we didn't need them, there are still guys who will do 100 miles on a bicycle with a B17 and no spandex....

I think that clipless pedals are a great advance for racing when being .01 MPH faster actually means something, for regular riders, without heavy traffic clips and straps are sufficient, and if you ride in traffic they can be downright dangerous. Besides most often the reason for being out there is not to set a bicycle speed record.

Helmets, well I don't know, that's a hard one, heads already come with hard shells, they are called skulls, I would suspect that and most injuries are not external impact injuries, they are concussion type injuries where the brain collides with the inside of the skull causing swelling of the injured tissues, since skulls don't expand the swelling squeezes the brain causing more injury. Unfortunately, we don't get reports on the types of injuries involved in cycling related deaths. There is an assumption that a rider who had a leg ripped off and a crushed sternum died of a head injury because they were not wearing a helmet.

Pamestique 

Not a helmet nazi and I know some people hate the notion of wearing a helmet but I am LIVING (thank goodness to be alive) proof that helmets save lives. For 30 years I rode without and now I won't ride unless that helmet is sitting properly upon my head (serious head injury July 2003 - doctors confirmed without my helmet I would have been dead or worse - vegetative).

I think it's a personal choice but all of my friends who have had serious head injuries and lived to tell the stories, they would all tell you never ride without.

Also... I resisted going clipless - I thought them unsafe. Now I know just the opposite. There is nothing unsafe about having your feet attached to the bike. I found cages and straps much harder to disengage from in a panic stop. Now, simple click, I'm out. All the "trappings" of cycling (helmets, gloves, clipless pedals, spandex etc) all have a real and valid purpose. You don't have to pay a fortune to be adequately protected. A $30 helmet is as good as a $300 helmet.

himespau 

uh oh. Careful y'all or we might just get this thread moved to C&V

himespau 

or A&S