They say you never forget how to ride a bike. Once you learn how to balance and turn your legs over to propel the bike forward it stays with us for a lifetime. Scientists have discovered that this memory is stored in a certain part of the brain and the electrodes are activated when you perform motor skills. Rather than try and explain it myself, one article on the topic can be found here.
The other day I was driving past a young man who was struggling to ride his bike up a hill. It was not that he was unfit or his bike was no good, he just didn’t know how to do it efficiently. It reminded me of so many activities we do day to day that can waste a lot of time simple because we are not efficient. (One thing that comes to mind is my cutting of vegetables for dinner!) The way to get better is by trial and error and by learning from those with more efficient techniques. Often it is a simple adjustment that makes all the difference.
My cycling friends first mistake was that his seat was far too low. Your seat should be positioned so that your leg is almost straight at the bottom of the stroke. This gives your muscles the best range of movement to comfortably tick the legs over. When your seat is too low it puts unnecessary pressure on your quadriceps making them fatigue quickly. Like a car that chews too much petrol because it needs a service, your body needs to be in an efficient position to get the best results.
The next thing with cycling is that most people are always pushing down on the pedals engaging only your quadriceps and calf muscles whilst your hamstrings do nothing. Imagine how much more efficient you could be by including another large muscle group? That is why cyclists where special shoes to clip into the bike. It allows them to engage their hamstrings so they can share the workload. It takes a little bit of getting used to but instead of each leg taking turns at going push, push, push, push, each leg is continually going push, pull, push, pull giving a much more fluent and efficient motion.
The final tip I have for this cyclist is to ride with a friend or two. I have talked about this before in a post about teamwork and Lance Armstrong where an estimated 30% energy is saved by riding in a slipstream protected from the wind.
How do I know all this? About eight years ago I rode Around The Bay In A Day with my friend Brendan in sneakers on our mountain bikes. The 210km was a hard slog that took us over 12 hours to complete. We noticed that we were pretty much the only ones with backpacks and mountain bikes and at age 21 we should have been finishing much sooner than some of the bike riders who completed the distance hours before us.
The following year we got all the right equipment and did all the right things and finished a good three hours quicker by putting in the same effort.
So what is it that you do that you know can be done more efficiently to get a better result or gain back some time to do the things you love?
Chris Bellesini
Remember, You Too, Can
Choose Your Own Success
