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Overall, I feel like things are really starting to click with my training schedule. Last weekend, I did my 50km long ride in a pair of chamois shorts, arm warmers, and a jersey, and it was amazing. I felt fast and light and was acknowledged by at least three roadies. Granted, it was three very subtle nods, but I know they were saying “Welcome to the club, friend!”
I revisited Burnaby Mountain, and with the help of Allan’s hill climbing advice, I didn’t feel nearly as much hate toward the mountain as I did the last time I rode up it. I’ve taken a liking to Kona Cola Nuun tablets, which are laced with caffeine and highly enjoyable. My “spin-class-for-speed-ride” change-up is totally working for me – sweating it out to obnoxiously catchy Lady Gaga songs makes the hour fly by, whereas my previous speed workouts felt more like staring death in the eye for 60 minutes.
I’m trying to be diligent on my routine bike maintenance, but for whatever reason, I have a serious block against wiping down my bike after a ride. Check the tire pressure, check for cuts, check alignment – all fine. But taking a towel to it after a ride? I go blank. (And then I wheel into the bike room at MEC, and am instantly shamed by the gleaming frames that surround me. I’m working on that.)
The one thing I can’t seem to shake, though, is the niggling thought of being sidelined by an injury. Since I broke my ankle two years ago, injuries have become a heightened, some may go as far as to say paranoid, fear of mine. I need the inside scoop on how to keep my body from unexpectedly falling apart before the ride.
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A few weeks ago, Dr. James Grimmett, Doctor of Chiropractic and Active Release Technique (ART)® instructor, came to MEC head office to do a staff Lunch & Learn on injury prevention for runners and cyclists. I spent the entire presentation in the state of “ah-hah!” The connection between my posture, non-existent (but hopefully growing?!) core strength, and my hips finally clicked. And when Dr. Grimmett shed light on something that had never even occurred to me – the difference between a tight muscle and a weak one – I knew I needed to pick his brain for more info.
MUSCLES
I’ve always been fairly negligent when it comes to stretching. And when I say “negligent” I mean “lazy.” It’s just one of those things that I know I should do, but very rarely dedicate any time to it. I’ve attributed tight muscles to my recurring ankle and hip issues, but when this very issue was addressed in the Lunch & Learn, Dr. Grimmett’s response blew my mind.
“A tight muscle and a weak muscle can present in a similar fashion. However, a tight muscle is likely from a bit of over-use, like when you’ve run a marathon and have really expended those muscles – while you can certainly feel muscle soreness, regular mobility will generally sort that stiffness out,” says Dr. Grimmett when I asked about, what I had believed to be, perpetually tight hips. “However, when you’ve been feeling something for a while, or you have a recurring muscle issue, you should start to ask why – why is this tight, why is this happening?”
Okay, I’ll bite… why? “When a tissue is weak, its capacity and range of motion diminishes. When the body senses that weakness, it contracts and begins to guard against movement to prevent any further damage being done to that tissue,” Dr. Grimmett explains. “And the last thing a guarding muscle wants is to be taken to its end range, such as with a stretch. Forcing a guarding muscle into a stretch that exceeds its end range is like opening Pandora’s Box. The longer a compensation pattern takes place, the more injured a tissue can become.”
Hearing this makes me feel really sad for my poor body, which I know has been compensating from the moment I broke my ankle. I can only imagine the in-fighting that now goes on between my hip and ankle: “You do it! No you do it, it’s your job. But I’m so weak – I’m being guarded, remember?” And so, resignedly, my overspent hip carries the brunt of the load until it can’t anymore. And that’s when I land back in physio, cursing my laziness and promising that if I just get through this injury and back on the road one more time, I’ll become a faithful stretching convert. But now that this whole tight versus weak stuff has come up, I’m starting to realize that chronically stretching something that’s weak is likely more damaging than helpful.
“Although research is lacking in the world of stretching, from an observational standpoint it’s hard to not support the role that stretching, in addition to strength and balance, plays in the performance of powerhouse athletes like Usain Bolt, Bruce Lee, Roger Federer, whose muscle tissue and fascia is healthy and strong. Athletic performance is about putting it all out there and getting your muscles to work at 100% of their capacity, and the stronger and healthier your muscle tissue and fascia is, the more able you are to enhance the function of that muscle and perform at a higher level,” says Dr. Grimmett. “However, when stretching a muscle that is tight due to weakness, it’s likely to backfire because you’ve taken it out of its recovery mode. Any work that muscle does needs to happen within the limited range that the guarding provides, and under a load that the tissue can tolerate so that it’s able to build strength, safely.”
SELF-ANALYSIS
When I hear this, I have a flash of worry: I know my hips are weak, but what about other parts of my body? For my entire active life, I’ve believed that my hips are tight, and now I’m learning that for my entire active life, they’ve just been weak. Are there red flags I can look for in my form or mobility that would tip me off to other weakness or potential injury sites? “Definitely,” Dr. Grimmett responds, “There are a number of cues you can use to self-assess where your body is at.”
Here are four ways to analyze your body:
1. Posture: “Take a look at your side profile in the mirror (you can also set your camera’s timer and snap a photo of your side) and hold what you feel is your best attempt at good posture. You don’t want to be too rounded forward and you want your ears directly over your shoulders. If you’re looking at yourself straight on in the mirror, it’s normal to have your dominant hand hang slightly lower than your other one – it is stronger and will naturally hang lower because of gravity.”
And of course, this all begs the question: What is good static posture? Dr. Grimmett says, “I subscribe to the idea of functional centration, which means that the best possible load distribution comes from maximum contact of articular surfaces.” Translation: you always want maximum contact between your bone joints. “When you’re moving, your joints will be in locomotion, like an elbow in tennis or your knees in cycling, but your spine should remain stable and quite rigid.”
So not like this:
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The Triplets of Belleville: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286244/
And more like this:
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Source: “Clinical Biomechanics: Musculoskeletal Actions and Reactions”, R. C. Schafer, DC, PhD
2. Shoulders: “Your shoulder blades should lie flat against your back. Scapula “winging” (aka: your shoulder blade sticking out from your back ribcage) is a sign of shoulder girdle weakness, and will make holding any sort of rigid position on your bike quite tough,” explains Dr. Grimmett. If you can’t see this in a mirror, have a friend run their hand over your back when you’re standing in your best posture.
3. On-bike position: “Partner up with a friend and ask them to watch you ride. Basically, they’re looking at your plane of movement to see if you’re symmetrical. Is one shoulder blade flaring out, does one knee go in out, or are they symmetrical? Does your spine appear to be moving a lot? If your posture seems off, one of the first ways to address it is simply to have your bike properly fitted. A seat that’s too high or bars that are too far away could easily be what’s causing on-bike asymmetry.
4. Movement: “There are several tests used to assess your body’s global movement patterns, which account for the body’s range of motion and mobility. One of these tests is to bend over and touch the floor without bending your knees*. Not being able to so is a sign of dysfunction.”
* This should simply be used as a test to assess a global movement pattern, not an exercise, as the forward bend is one commonly done poorly.
EXERCISES
In addition to busily micro-analyzing my movement patterns and posture, I ask Dr. Grimmett if there are exercises I can do to beef up areas I know are weak, and practices I can introduce to my cycling workouts to minimize the potential for injury. And of course, there are.
1. Increase lateral stabilizers and while you’re at it, weight bearing activity
“Cycling isn’t about great flexibility; it’s about a limited range of controlled, linear motion. Your body will greatly benefit from a strong lateral support system however, because it will help to keep that linear system true,” says Dr. Grimmett. “Also, because cycling is a non-impact sport, adding a weight bearing element to a lateral exercise will increase your hips’ strength and help ensure good bone health.”
Increase your lateral stabilizers with leg raises:
- Lie on your side with your entire back body against a wall (the purpose of this is to make sure that your hips remain stacked directly on top of one another; you’re using the wall for alignment).
- With your feet flexed, raise your top leg about 30-40cm off of your bottom leg, making sure your heel stays along the wall the entire time.
- Lower your top leg.
- Repeat the raise-lower motion 120 times per leg.
- Remember: an exercise is only good if it’s done properly. Taking the time to execute an exercise the right way is far more effective than volume or quantity.
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For a weight bearing lateral exercise:
- Walk sideways, taking side steps of about 30cm, leading with the same leg each step.
- Keep your feet parallel, and perpendicular to the floor.
- Once you’ve stepped about 30 feet, switching lead legs and sideways walk back.
- Once you’ve mastered doing the 30-feet walk—there and back—3 times (and “mastered” means that you end your third rep with a burn/fatigue in your lateral hips) then try the same exercise with a Thera-Band (or something elasticized with resistance that you can tie into a circle; I use my Pilates stretch band) wrapped around your mid-calves.
- Get creative at work and give your hips a wake-up call by trying to do this sideways crabwalk while sitting in your rolling desk chair.
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Note: I am using a Thera-band to do the sideways walk; however, it is Dr. Grimmett’s recommendation to start without the band until you’re able to master 3 reps of 30-feet, there and back, sideways walks.
2. Take it one leg at a time
It requires lateral stability and balance to do a one-legged squat correctly. And when you’re riding, you’re firing off of one leg at a time, which makes doing individual leg squats an excellent complementary exercise for cyclists, not just to ward off injury but also to harness more power in your legs for grueling hill climbs.
- Bend one leg at the knee, raising it slightly so that you’re balanced on one foot. (You can lift your raised leg to the front or the back.) Lower yourself slowly on your supporting leg as far down as you can go without your knee going over your mid-foot.
- Raise yourself up and repeat without lowering your elevated leg.
- Do the same with the opposite leg.
- Hold onto the back of a chair or balance yourself using a wall if you need a little extra stability. Some athletes prefer to do a balanced squat, propping their raised leg up behind them on a bench so that they get a stretch in their quad, in addition to the squat.
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3. Always Balance Out
“Go for a walk following every ride you do,” says Dr. Grimmett. “This counters the constant state of flexion your hips were in for your entire ride, which is important because it allows you to straighten up and work on posture.”
“Hips that are too tight can commonly manifest as a low back issue,” explains Dr. Grimmett when I ask for an example of what happens when tight hips are put into motion too quickly. “Think about the bike-to-run transition at an Ironman. You get off your bike – and for someone doing an Ironman, this can be after 6- 8 hours of being hunched over their bars – and you’re suddenly trying to go from a state of flexion to a state of extension, without any sort of warm-up or loosening. Your hips are still so tight that you’re curled over for your first few steps but, because your head is telling your body to run, your back is trying to adopt an upright position. This action can seem abrupt when the hips are fatigued, and your body, sensing the potential for injury, causes the front hip muscles to become guarded. And so your back musculature, unable to surpass or overpower the guarding hip flexors, begins to spasm. This stops the movement and eliminates the threat to your hips, but ultimately takes you out of the race with what you think is a lower back issue.”
Ah, gotcha. I’ll start walking. Another added bonus to the post-ride walk: “It will inject some energy into your tired legs by getting the blood flowing into your calves,” says Dr. Grimmett. And it also provides you with some of that weight bearing exercise that’s mentioned in point #1.
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I am so thankful to have a better understanding of what’s happening in my body, and knowing some preventative measures I can take to ward off injury is so empowering. Throughout our talk, Dr. Grimmett also brought up the importance of breath and the role it plays in posture support and dynamic movement, and from this, locomotion. Breath is something that I always forget about; it’s just so innate that I hardly ever think of it being something I could leverage for power. When he cited that 70% of adults don’t breathe properly at rest, I knew it was something I needed to look into further. If you want to learn more about how breath connects to power and performance, check out The Prague School of Rehabilitation Rehab. It is the Rolls Royce of studying the role and mechanics of dynamic neuromuscular stabilization (which is what all of this is related to).
Wishing you safe and happy rides for week 7 …
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