Doing Push-Ups = More Aero
 

TL;DR
What training do you do to stay in an aero position for as long as possible?

Background
I used to think that riding in the drops was the most aero position one could have on a standard road bike with standard drop bars. I typically didn't ride in that position very much as it's certainly not all that easy to stay in such a low position for any length of time. Fast-forward to today, research has shown that the most aero position is actually to have one's hands on the hoods with one's forearms parallel to the ground and the hoods angled inward. The theory is that this position creates the least amount of frontal surface area, thus is more aerodynamic.

Reference: Real-world aero testing: which hand positions are fastest? - CyclingTips

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...54934e8e8e.png
The Problem
As a cyclist, I typically spent very little time on my upper body for most of my now 47-year-old life. Like the gentleman in the image above, my arms were very puny, which made holding an aero position very difficult. In other words, I was sacrificing "free watts" due to wind resistance caused by my up-right riding position.

The Solution
I started doing push-ups and other calisthenics workouts for just a few minutes a day each day, not really for cycling but for health in general. I hate working out, but I did it anyway. What I found over the past year is that working on my upper body helped my cycling a lot. I can comfortably stay in the aero position shown above for mile after mile to the point where the aero position is almost my favorite riding position. (Almost!) While I'm still not "huge", I have some reasonably noticeable triceps that, along with some flexibility and core strength, help make an aero position more comfortable for rides well in excess of 40 miles. (Note that I have also angled my brake levers inward slightly and also switched to shorter crank arms, both of which helped stay in the aero position longer.)

How about you? Do you do anything off the bike to ensure an optimal riding position on the bike? (If "no", I'm curious as to how old you are as younger riders don't seem to need to work very hard to maintain a decent level of fitness.)

Since you should not be supporting your weight with your arms and chest, I’m not sure how those workouts help you to stay aero. I think working on core strength and flexibility is much more important for maintaining your on-the-bike position.

It's all in the core ... and core strength adds so much to many other parts of riding.

Here's is a great conversation from my friend, physical theropist, and bike-fitter Paulie, if the time start link doesn't work, jump to 14:11


For folks around the Twin Cities, check out Go Physio https://gophysiomn.com/


Oh and that bike training in Paulie's studio ... it fit my drop-bar Pugsley and fat tires on a drum are super loud! And we've worked with him on a fit for our tandem too.

I do workout off of the bike, though not as regularly as I should, but not with the intent of helping position on the bike. As previously mentioned, you shouldn't be aiming to support upper body weight with chest, shoulders, arms, etc. Doing so is a Band-Aid, much like cyclists seeking more and more padding, via gloves and bar tape, because their hands hurt. Work on the problem, not the symptoms.

I agree with all of this. But this should be added to the conversation: endurance athletes tend to have reduced bone density, and weight training can help rebuild it -- which helps to avoid breaking bones more easily in later years. Also, core strength becomes all the more important as we age, since it aids balance and stability off-the-bike as well as on it. So, weightlifting is important to all-round fitness. Bulking up arms and chests is not really the point, but working the core, and dynamic lifts like squats and deadlifts, are good ideas.

Agree that working the core strength is most important and then improving flexibility.
It also helps to have upper body strength so pushups, military or bench presses will also help.

Riding in aero as much as possible.

Sure, some plank and pushup can help, but at the end of the day you just have to put in the miles the way you want to ride.

I ride my TT bike up to 150min at a time in a very tight position. I'm used to it because I started off just riding it one day a week for maybe 10mi. Then slowly increased from there. You can do the same on a road bike. Do it for brief periods. Then do it more often. Then it's no big deal after a while.

Also, how much you weigh can affect the difficulty of this task. I would expect this to be tougher for a 200lb rider than a 150lb rider.

You can be just about as aero whether on the hoods or in the drops. The drops give you a better angle on the arm to hold you down when putting out near your maximum power and trying to stay aero on a road bike. Or put in another way, you'll be faster in the drops than you will the hoods. At least I am.

If we are on a TT bike with a more vertical seat tube then things are different. Since I don't ride one, some other will have to say.

As for how to get use to it, ride more in the drops. I struggle all the time to stay for more than a few minutes in the drops. I have found that exercising in addition to just making myself go to the drops seems to help. Exercises to help your abdominal muscles that also strengthen the lower back muscles as well as arms and upper body.

I'm not so big on the idea that the hands and arms should not bear any weight. That just seems unreasonable and the more you shift your weight back, the less effective your power going to the pedals. Unless you are on a 'bent. And that's a different sub-forum.

I do 2, 1 hour sessions each week with a personal trainer and at home core work. It’s not to be “aero” so much as it is to have strength. I also believe the leg work helps w/ sprinting.

Im a believer that the bars don’t support the upper body, I can pull my hands off the bars in the drops and remain in the same position and maintain the same power

All of the above!

Deadlifts, abs, deadlifts, squats, and maybe a few deadlifts. For me, at least, it's all about using the glutes to cantilever the trunk low over the bike without overworking the back extensors or weighting the arms.

Yeah, along those lines, one of the things that hasn't yet been mentioned is fore/aft saddle position, which can really affect weight distribution - it's hard to cantilever your torso when your CoG is too far forward.

Single leg deadlifts for the win. Core strength and balance are important to all humans.

I like them, but tend to stick to the regular thing in order to use more weight and keep the antigravity forces high. That's what the old bones like, or so one reads.

Eddy knew this in the 60s:

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...b8456cb226.jpg

For aero position fitness I do lower back stuff like "single leg active bridges" with 10-30 second isometric holds, as well as some tricep rope pulldowns with 5 second holds.

Agreed. I get it that one shouldn't be supporting the entire weight of the upper body with one's arms, but one would have to have an insanely fit lower back to be able to support the entire torso in an aero position for any length of time w/o the arms.

Sure, okay. But your arms shouldn't be bearing so much weight that you need to lift weights to make it work.

True, but it depends.

All my life I've seldom done any formal exercises other than when required to for my elementary school days in Phys Ed class. I was always very active during all my life before 60yo both at work and around the home. But now in life after 60 and retired, I'm finding that I don't do enough of anything. I do cycle a lot, but that doesn't help maintain anything much but leg muscles and cardio-vascular health. Arm muscles, not so much.

So I've been trying to make better habits of working out and lifting some free weights at home. It actually has seemed to help with some of the annoyances I've started to feel while cycling. I've even been considering if I need to go to a gym to keep me more motivated.

All through my working life, even though I did no formal exercises, when I did have a ache or pain I found that doing some exercises to both stretch out the muscles and strengthen the muscles in that part of my body really helped eliminate the ache and pains.

I have no doubt that working out (including weight lifting) helps you to feel better generally. But I also have no doubt that, unless a rider's setup is grossly wrong, his/her arms are never bearing enough weight that muscle strength is a factor.

None of us mortals should try to emulate the pros in most things ... Especially the climber body's.

That said, Froome didn't need much arm or upper body muscle to win grand tours

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...7859ec5c42.jpg

Truth. While I was thinking about my poor, puny triceps, in order to do a quality push-up one must have good core strength as well since a push-up pretty much is a moving plank.

I do find it odd that top cyclists look like they don't have a single muscle on their entire bodies, yet they are crazy-fast. Must be the whole "slow twitch" vs "fast twitch" muscle type thing? Then again, sprinters look like they have muscles.

^ This.
When a cyclist is young and full of testosterone (assuming a male cyclist), one doesn't have to do much off the bike to feel good and ride fast. However, once we men get past ~35 years of age, testosterone production starts taking a nose-dive and what we could do in our 20s can't be done into the 40s, 50s, and beyond without working at it. *Most* pro athletes are relatively young, so perhaps my original post should've suggested push-ups for aging cyclists that don't want to resort to sitting up-right like a peacock because one's upper body strength has gone away.

No, it's the fact that road cycling is a primarily an aerobic sport, the upper body muscles aren't the primary drivers and that, other than the core, they're also not heavily relied upon for position.

That's because they're doing the opposite of what you're doing - they're not pushing themselves up, they're pulling up on the bars. For the most part, pedaling force is a lot less than that of the cyclist's body weight. The exception is something like sprinting, where the pedal force can significantly exceed the rider's weight, which means that the whole body needs to provide the platform to push against, with the arms and trunk anchoring against the bike via the bars.