Originally Posted by timtak

@couldwheels thank you for the stretch suggestion. I have been meaning to do the pigeon on the floor but I actually got around to doing it as you suggested, seated.

I wonder why ankling has become less popular. I thought it might be because with lots of team funding, and radios, cycling has become even more of a team sport, in which approximately 80 percent of riders never achieve a top ten placing (https://youtu.be/iUuwBfXDlTs?t=1330), but escort those who are closer to sprinters to do their thing. But even so, one would expect the domestiques to be ankling but very few are these days it seems. Very few people seem to be getting INTO the ⊂ of the drops of their road bikes, which were surely designed to favour that position, allowing one to access the brakes.
When I was road running I would get ONTO my drops but rarely INTO them. GCN made a video recently about cycling position and did not even mention getting INTO the drops, only ONTO them.

Rather than (wattle and) daubing, which I have never done, the action starts off like pointingmortar, on the soles of my feet, into brickwork.

But that metaphor is really just to get an idea of the motion. As mentioned above, as I speed up my feet become level.

I feel a bit like a squid advancing in the direction of my hand-leg-tentacles.

One of the things that made me stick with road-running so long was the scientific studies that showed (?) that riders are only putting putting power out on the downswing using power meters. In respect of this
0) The riders tested may be 'modern' ones that don't use the technique.
1) The biggest pull provided by my glutes now occurs on the downswing from about 5 o'clock (as Carbonfibreboy suggested, I think, somewhere). I start pushing sooner and pass the baton to my glutes sooner while still on the downswing, and as couldwheels says the pull on my glutes at that point is dramatic.
2) I can feel my glutes working even when my feet are behind me like I am kicking sand in the face of (absent) following riders but perhaps the power is not great enough to be sensed by the (absent) power meters. It feels good though.

Above all, I know is that my knees were failing and my legs were falling off: I had hip instability in my right hip after about 20 years of time-trialy road bike running. Now when I get on my bike I can feel myself rejuvenating my glutes, which are really feeling quite youthful. I think I am going to have to reinstall Strava :-)