Travis Bikes America

Though it seems simple, biking efficiently requires a lot of balance.  A lot of small (and typically unnoticed) core muscles help you balance effectively. That’s why a stationary trainer only approximates a real bike ride.  On a trainer, you don’t need to use your core muscles for balance.  (The old school roller-based trainers are an exception).

Since balance and core strength are important, I like to use a BOSU ball as part of my training.  I think BOSU originally meant Both Sides Up since you can use either side of the ball.  I typically do “normal” exercises while standing on the ball; for instance, bicep curls with free weights, squats with weights, and different kinds of dips and thrusts.  You can also do sit-ups as you see in the picture.

Remember the tri-planar ax chop from yesterday’s post?  Here are two variations that will help improve your balance and core strength.  First, do the ax chop while standing on one foot.  Once you’ve mastered that, do the ax chop on one foot while standing on the BOSU ball.  It’s almost too much fun.

As you develop your training program, think about the three planes of motion:

1. The frontal plane (sometimes called the coronal plane) divides your body into the front half and the back half.
2. The sagittal plane divides you into left half and right half.
3. The transverse plane divides you into top half and bottom half.

In our daily life, we often move in all three planes simultaneously.  Our exercises, on the other hand, tend to focus on one plane or two at most.  The one that we tend to ignore is the transverse plane.  Most of our exercise machines work our top half (arms, shoulders, chest) or our bottom half (legs, glutes) but not our top and bottom half.  It’s like we have a top and a bottom but they’re not related to each other.

There are a few tri-planar exercises that work all three planes of motion.  One of the better known is the ax chop.  Pick up a weight (a medicine ball is good) that’s to the right of your right foot. Swivel and lift until the weight is above your left shoulder.  Then repeat, starting on your left side and finishing above your right shoulder. You can do this with a weight or with a stretch band.

The burpee (or squat thrust) is also a good tri-planar exercise.  We all learned the basic maneuver in high school gym class.  You can make it make it more strenuous by adding a push up when you get to the plank position or by adding a kettlebell that you lift over your head.

So, when you think of your hips, what area of your body do you think of?  Yeah, so do I.  But it turns out that your hips — or at least your hip flexors — are also on the front part of your body, right where the top of your legs meet your trunk.  Just look at the picture on the right.

Why are they important?  Because they hurt if you don’t take proper care of them. Mainly you need to stretch them.  Most muscles work “one way” and you stretch them by moving them the “other way”.  Your hamstrings, for instance, pull backwards and you stretch them by bending forward.  You hip flexors, on the other hand, work both ways so you need to stretch them both ways.  Your hip flexors pull your legs forward, so you need to stretch them backwards.  They also pull your leg backwards, so you need to stretch them forward.  See the two pictures for the two types of stretch.

I work out with Alison, my personal trainer, two or three times a week.  We start each session with a round of dynamic stretching. This is simply stretching while moving. What most of us learned in high school gym class was static stretching, that is stretching while standing or lying still. Here’s an example of dynamic stretching: hold your left arm straight in front of you at shoulder height.  Then kick your right foot up to touch your left hand. Then do your right arm and left foot.  Repeat 20 times on each side.  According to Wikipedia, “Dynamic stretching increases range of movement, blood and oxygen flow to soft tissues prior to exertion.”  According to Alison, you perform better when you warm up with dynamic stretching rather than static stretching.  At the end of a training session, on the other hand, we often cool down with static stretching.

I wanted to watch the last round of the Master’s so I went to Pura Vida health club in Denver.  It’s a great club with lots of cool stuff and really good looking people.  It was voted the best club in Denver in 2010. Suellen did Bikram yoga with the world-famous instructor Natasha V.    I chose not to do Bikram — those of us with MS don’t do real well with heat.  Instead I did an hour on a spinning bike and then half and hour on an elliptical machine.  Then back home for a nice nap with Bella.

Myofascial self-release sounds like it ought to be illegal but it’s actually an important treatment for cross-country cycling.  Remember the IT bands?  They’re a fascia — a bundle of fibers connecting the hips to the knee.  (The Latin root for “fascia” means a bundle, as in a bundle of sticks.  It’s the root word for “fascist” whose symbol was a bundle of firewood.)  When the fascia get tight, you need to release them.  I often do this with  cross-footed toe touch.  Put your left foot just to the right of your right foot, then bend over and touch your toes.  Then reverse your feet and do it again.  You can also do this by rolling on a foam roller — as in the picture. Like voting in Chicago, you should do it early and often.

The illiotibial band (IT band) is a thick bundle of tissue that runs down the outside of your thigh, from your gluteus maximus to your knee.  Its primary purpose is to stabilize the knee.  Since it’s not muscle, it doesn’t stretch in the same way muscle does. Even if you’re a conscientious stretcher, your IT bands can stay too tight and cause significant pain.  On long rides, I often get some pain near my of gluteus maximus, in the small TFL muscle.  The pain is almost always on the right side (I’m right handed) and it’s dull and achy.  The general wisdom is that RICE therapy is the best approach: Resting, Icing, Compression, and Elevation.  I also find that hip adductor and (especially) abductor weight lifting strengthen the entire area and help me avoid pain altogether. The hip abductor exercises don’t strengthen the IT band — it’s not a muscle — but do strengthen the TFL muscle and that tends to make the IT bands behave properly.