Core matters

Nonstop cycling neglects crucial muscles

Frank Webber (from left), Kathy Stevens and instructor Nick Pippins warm up during a yoga for bicyclists class at Chainwheel in Little Rock.
Frank Webber (from left), Kathy Stevens and instructor Nick Pippins warm up during a yoga for bicyclists class at Chainwheel in Little Rock.

— This was a pretty nasty crash, one whose damage would not be fully known until months later.

It was the day before she was supposed leave for a 60-mile mountain bike race in Missouri and Sara Miller was at Camp Robinson on a late October day in 2008 taking a final tune-up ride, one last spin to affirm her training and remind her legs of the task to come.

She was on a trail called Yucca, a fun, fast, flowing ribbon of single-track that sublimely snakes through the Camp Robinson forest, slicing between trees and over rocks, gaining speed on the smooth dirt.

And then she crashed.

“I was going a little too fast, I guess, and a vine grabbed my handlebar and threw me right off of my bike,” Miller says. So there she was, screaming in agony on the forest floor, with bones she wasn’t sure weren’t broken, and what did she do?

Well, the next day she drove to Missouri and competed in the Berryman Epic race.

And after that she went snowboarding.

“I actually sheared bone off of my pelvis and stress-fractured my hip, but I didn’t know it at the time,” Miller says.

There was another mountain bike race as well - on a single-speed bike - but by January, Miller knew something was wrong. She learned of her fractures after consulting her doctor.

There was time off the bike, but after getting back to riding Miller was struck with excruciating low-back pain. After a couple of visits to her doctors she wasdiagnosed with fractures to her L4 and L5 vertebrae.

To get back on her bike, Miller, 29, would need to undertake a regimen tostrengthen her core muscles, those hidden, stabilizing assemblies of sinew in the trunk of our bodies that, for many cyclists, are often forgotten and untrained.

HARD CORE

So what, exactly, are core muscles?

Here’s Robert Panzera, a USA Cycling-certified coach from San Diego and author of Cycling Fast, Winning Essentials for Cycling Competition.

“There’s no hard and fast rule, but the general agreement is that core muscles are the mid and lower back, and abdominals. Some examples from Gray’s Anatomy include pelvic muscles, erector spinae, transversus abdominis, internal and external obliques, multifidus, rectus abdominis, longissimus thoracis.”

And while it’s easy to see, say, a big ol’ biceps in your arm, core muscles are mostly tucked away beneath other muscles, or along the spine or hips, and aren’t exactly, ummmm, glamorous.

But they are pretty important.

“Core muscles are always used for any human activity, except in some cases when lying down, to stabilize the body,” Panzera says. From the lower back to the hips and thighs, the influence of the core is crucial.

Imagine a cyclist - mountain biker or a roadie: They are hunched over their handlebar, legs pumping away. The core isn’t really getting much of a workout.

Sure, Panzera says, “more aggressive cyclists who stand, whether on climbs or in sprints, will definitely activate, utilize andtrain their core.”

But, he adds, if the bike is the only form of exercise, especially for recreational cyclists, then it’s “important to develop core muscles as they may be neglected.”

Here’s Miller again.

“In order for me to get back on my bicycle, I had to build my core strength,” she says.

Her coach, Shaun Taylor, had been telling her for some time that she needed to mix in core work with her cycling and she was finally ready to listen.

Working with personal trainer Rebecca Irons, Miller began to strengthen her core with medicine ball pushups, exercises on a BOSU (BothSides Utilized) ball (it’s like one of those big exercise balls that has been cut in half ), crunches, planks and “anything that would engage the lower back.”

And there was also stretching, squats, lunges and lots of time spent on a stability ball.

“All of the stuff people hate, we did,” Miller says with a smile.

It wasn’t time-intensive - just three times a week for about a half hour each time - and Miller would also do 15-30 minutes when she didn’t go to the gym. Working at home was a breeze, she said.

“I invested $100 in a BOSU ball and that was about all I needed.”

All of this core work, and her love for her bike, also brought Miller to a new passion back in September.

“I should have been doingit my whole life.”

Yoga.

POSERS

Erin Lorenzen has been practicing yoga since 1998 and has been a yoga instructor for about a year. Though not a cyclist, she’d been trying to convince some of her cyclist friends that yoga would help them with their sport.

“Cyclists use the same muscles over and over again,” she said. “There’s a lot of tightness and imbalance [in their muscles]. Yoga helps counterbalance all of that. It’s an ancient system that organizes the bones in a way to allow the muscles to stretch and allows you to release all that stress and tension.”

Hunched over a handlebar a cyclist’s chest is tight, while the lower back can beoverstretched. It can send a rider down a rabbit hole of ailments, Miller says.

“Just from the posture that we are in, it can lead to [pain in] your lower back or if you have tight hamstrings, if you are tight in your quads or your hips, it can lead to lower back pain. Keeping all of that loose, especially your upper chest, can make a huge difference in [alleviating] low back pain.”

Lorenzen has begun leading a Yoga for Cyclists class at Little Rock’s Chainwheel bike shop, where Miller works. For about 90 minutes beginning at 6 p.m. Wednesdays, she runs through a cycling-specific yoga routine. Cost is $15 per session or four classes for $40 with all levels, and especially beginners, welcome.

“We do a lot to open up the front of the body,” she says ofthe various poses used in the class. “There’s back-bending and stretching the hips, and some abdominal work.”

OTHER OPTIONS

Many cyclists have found success with yoga and Pilates as well, says Panzera, the San Diego coach.

“What has worked for me in the past is to actually use light weights or low tension cables and focus on shoulder exercises while keeping my core stabilized,” he added. “These functional arm and shoulder movements activate the core naturally.”

And there are ways to build core strength on the bike, Panzera said, but the direction is up, as in climbing.

“Climbing causes the cyclist to balance the upper body to draw power for the lower body. Standing onclimbs as well will not only utilize your core, but more of your upper body.”

BACK IN THE SADDLE

It has been a long road back to the bike for Miller. But she has grown stronger from that little spill back in 2008, and she has learned training lessons that have gotten her back riding again. And riding strong. All this work off her bike has helped her on her bike.

“I can ride my bicycle without pain,” she says with a smile. “I did a four-hour ride on the mountain bike last weekend and I did not have a single bit of back pain.”

Oh, sure, other stuff hurt - lungs, legs - but that’s not unusual. It’s a bike ride. There will be aches.

But for the first time in a while her back was fine.

ActiveStyle, Pages 23 on 02/28/2011

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