timtak

There are bound to he some rocks in my hill climb that I can step on but then hill climbing may do the trick.
Thanks. I think that Carbon's advise above may have done the trick. It felt strangely also like having sex with my bike, sort of thrusting my pedal strokes. Too much information.

But in the meantime I have given myself a epigastric hernia, either doing all these core exercises, or perhaps karate stretching on top of a big mug of tea last night. The operation would really take it out of my core strength so I am going to let it be. It seems to be only fatty tissue so far.

timtak

Yes. I think my new epigastric hernia may have a variety of causes. I have been lifting weights in rearward, and diagonally rearward leg raises, up to 9kg, on my ankles. Even the act of getting down long and low and using my glutes on a bike may be a part cause. Damn shame! Just as I get my butt (spinal) hernia and its ill effect on my glutes under control, I get an abdominal hernia! Ageing is a ***** but, I remain upbeat.

I can sort of imagine this, waving my legs, as if a whip or something but I have not got the hang of this at all yet. I can go into glute mode, and normal mode but not both at the same time.

Thanks, I will try that.

timtak

My abdominal wall is intact and the lump is on the outside below the skin so it is not a hernia but some sort of subcutaneous tumor that a local head doctor, of a large surgical hospital, says is not malignant. It is soft and painful. I think it must have been something to do with the very ardent stretching that I did but I am not entirely sure. I will see how it goes and in the meantime continue with my attempts to activate my glutes, when it stops snowing.

timtak

Alas, the only trainer I have is/are rollers which I can't use with my hands off my bars.

First of all I have pushed my seat back. I had it a LONG way forward, which is one of the reasons I was not using my glutes at all.

As well as swordsmanship, I think about being a sort of spider or other insect. That is to say rather than a person that is long and thin that stamps on the pedals, I think of myself as something quite compact that moves, or waves its legs.

timtak

I am finding that all I need to do is to put my timtaked bike back to normal and my hips are okay. Timtakery is okay when you are young perhaps but since I was only using my quads it nearly resulted in serious injury.

Back to Normal by Timothy Takemoto, on Flickr
When I started cycling I was a jogger with a weak and flabby butt with a little sciatic pain, so I did not want to use my butt muscles, so I flipped the seatpost for forward not rearward (as above) offset, added a long stem and jogged on my bike, pushing with my quads (thigh muscles) all the way around the pedal cycle like Road Runner starting off.

After 15 fun years of cycling in this position, my glutes got so weak, and my quads so strong, I was pushing my legs out of my hip joints. After a month or so of glute exercises and putting my saddle and stem back to a more conventional position (with respect to the fore-aft position of the saddle), my hips and knees are feeling much better. With my saddle about 10cm further back as compared to its previous timtak'ed position, I now exercise my glutes as I pedal my bike. Glutes are important.

If you are a runner with weak glutes then a timtaked position can allow fast cycling without learning to pedal. But in the long term it is bad for your body. I would like to add this warning to the thread where I propounded a Lanced/timtak'ed position, but the thread is closed.
https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycl...o-long-13.html

Perhaps in another few years I will find out why it is a bad idea to have such a lot of saddle to bar drop.

Ah, (a day or two later) come to think of it the high saddle too facilitates quad only cycling; I was using my thigh muscles to push to an almost fully extended leg. Glute cycling involves spinning a more L shaped leg (see carbonfibreboy's comment about locking the knee) from the butt. I think I should put my saddle down, until at least I have buns of steel.

Addendum 3/20
Le Monde said we should scrape the mud from our feet, but that still suggests downward pressure.

I imagine being a dog marking, and doing that last scuff the earth back behind you thing that dogs do when they have finished marking.

But I also try to stop thinking about my feet, or even pedalling. If I think about feet and pedalling my attention is focussed on my feet and pedals when it is the muscles at the other end of my leg, in my butt, that I want to be thinking about.

Lance, or his trainer, said we should spin, which is better than mash, but again "spin" focusses upon spinning the pedals.

I think about whipping not pedalling. It seems to me that a glutey pedalling style is like whipping your legs holding your thigh bone in your glute-hand and generating a whipping motion that flows through your leg, like AJ's battle rope.
Battle rope your way to buns of steel!

The other advantage of the whip/battle rope metaphor is it highlights how acceleration has to be to some extent gradual. If you whip or battle rope too quickly you do not generate a wave form that travels through the whip or rope. If you are just cycling with your quads, you can ride a fixy, mega-mash and go from standstill to as fast as you like depending on the size of your thighs. But when you are using your whole leg including and starting at your glutes you generally have to speed up more gradually through the gears, and the harmonics (?) of your "battle rope" legs.

I am also doing a variety of butt exercises as well.

Addendum 3/30
I am definitely into whipping my pedals. When you use a whip you sort of cast, like in fishing, and then, to crack the whip, we pull down and a little backwards to propagate the curve along the length of the whip. I guess the same is when using a battle rope except one uses an under-arm throw to create the first curve, followed by the downward pullback. Now when cycling I think I use my quads/thighs to get my leg out there fast, curved, the pedal in front of me, and then I use my glutes from about the 4-5 o'clock position to pull back, and crack the whip of my pedals. I am not quite as fast as I was when using my quads but I am getting there, and when my hips become stronger and I use my quads more too, I may even become faster than before!

I am still doing glute exercises.

Addendum 5/4 (4th of May)
With 600 glute exercises daily (100 bridges, 100 hydrants, 100 hydrants plus kick, 100 rear side kicks, 100 hydrants to donkey kick revolutions, 100 donkey kicks to hydrant revolutions and sometimes 100 squats) and more practice, I am now up to my previous speed (of my 40s). Since I am not mashing at all but pulling at the bottom of the pedal cycle, this glute-centred method of pedalling is easy on my knees, and the soles of my feet. It does hurt my butt a little more since the pull pulls me onto my saddle. I feel really stuck as I pedal. But now that I have muscle in that area, it is all okay. Whip your pedals today!