Endless crunches are worse than a waste of time, they can even
create an imbalance and dysfunction!
When I was a barely an adult, I gained a bunch of weight and just
tried to suck in my gut all the time, trying to hide it. This really
messed with my breathing and my mind, due to the breath connecting the
sympathetic and parasympathetic systems (Fight or Flight and Rest and Digest
respectively). I found yoga and the science behind it and stopped sucking
in my gut for a few decades. I did have nice abs from time to time with a
lot of work and strict dieting, usually burning out shortly afterward. I
developed dysfunction in my back and the pain that comes with it. I have
friends with killer washboard abs and terrible back problems. I think that
everyone, at one point or another, wanted washboard abs. The road racing
greats said to let the belly hang to get a more complete filling of the lower
lungs, where there is more O2 and CO2 transfer, due to more capillaries, which
seemed to fit in with the teaching from yoga.
Contrary to my title, I do believe that a strong functional core is
vital to riding and most other life activities. The key word is
functional! And I don't mean doing back extensions to balance the abs or
even regular planks, the position between many of the named poses in the yoga
sun salute.
Yoga teaches you how to breath as you move. I may have missed
it in all my years of study, but that was one key piece of information that
eluded me. Years ago, I got a clue. When getting certified as a personal
trainer, I learned about lordosis or sway back. It seemed kind of mundane to
a young guy wanting to get big and strong; how wrong I was!
Fast forward many years and I was mostly keeping my back in check,
mostly. I tried chiropractic for some time. I would get put back in
place, but without strengthening the weak muscles and loosening the tight
muscles, I was doomed to fall out of alignment sooner or later, hence having to
go back and get cracked one to three times a week. That is when I restarted
my yoga and it helped. I stopped getting adjusted after a doctor blamed
my neck degeneration on the repetitive adjustments. Not sure if it is true,
but it scared me off of chiropractic, except for an emergency. I know
this is not their business model. I went along pretty well for years, as
long as I got in at least one yoga session a week. My body would usually
let me know, gently, in a timely matter if I missed a session. Well, there
was a time that I seemed fine and I went a few weeks without yoga, everything was going swimmingly and then the worse pain that I have had in a very long time occurred, if
not the very worse ever. I went in for an emergency chiropractic adjustment
and the chiropractor put me on a machine that checked your alignment. After it lit up like a Christmas tree, he said I was pretty messed up and
would need weeks or months of follow ups, and of course he had a plan.
After the adjustment I did a light yoga session and then every day until
the next visit the following week. The chiropractor put me on the machine and
was astonished that hardly any lights on his machine came on. I learned
my lesson and never went a week without yoga, until I learned and practiced
proper form on certain kettle bell drills and stretches. More on that
later.
Again, I thought I had it figured out. Last year I had a
pretty good Single Speed riding, foam roller and Kettle Bell training plan for Cohutta 100. I was
short on time, but I came along really well and did great for a metric century. Unfortunately, I signed up for the hundred miler not a hundred kilometers!
I was geared too high, got cocky from the training, my standing riding
was mostly exhausted and my right lower back started screaming at me, pushing
the big gear mostly seated.
Some time afterward, I was cleaning out old photos from my phone
and had one of me bending over, marking a road race course with paint. From the
angle I could see that there had been a problem for some time. There was a
stiff part that forced the spine above it to bend more than it should. I
looked at my program with this lens and removed any suspect movements. It
did not help that I had a crash over a year before that was still affecting the
movement pattern of my left shoulder, forcing some compensation in the right
lower back, particularly overhead, but that is yet another story.
I was developing a program for an athlete of mine.
As I would hardly ever see her, I looked for videos of the drills I
wanted her to do on line. She was going to be doing mostly body weight or
low weight drills, due to time and access to equipment. I wanted to make
sure she was getting the form correct. Some of the best I have found that
are mountain bike specific are from James Wilson. But during my Youtube
search, videos from Strength Side kept popping up. Strength Side is
mainly about the core power lifting moves, at least from the videos I have seen,
squats and dead lifts, etc. He talked about Lordosis and what struck me
was the concept of bracing to keep your hips aligned deep in a squat. I
had gotten good, maybe too good at the hip hinge that is associated with the
dead lift and swing and seated riding and all the sitting that life throws at
you makes your hip flexors tight. I knew about the hip flexors, but keeping
them loose was only part of the puzzle.
Tight hip flexors tip your pelvis forward, by slightly flexing the
femur/pelvis joint and slack lower abs let this happen. So it comes back to that
mundane Lordosis, Strength Side says it best, that it just comes down to basics
that people would rather skip.
But what about the breathing? Luckily, I recently came across James
Wilson explaining Crocodile
Breathing. Crocodile breathing is
still diaphragmatic breathing, but you remain braced and let the sides and the
back expand more than the front, no more hanging belly.
So ironically, it seems that I come full circle to sucking in my
gut. To quote the band Cake's song Comanche; "You need to straighten your posture and suck in your
gut. You need to pull back your shoulders and tighten your butt.", but with proper breathing.
I should have listened to my mother and straightened my posture,
but no one ever explained how to me or I was not ready to hear it.
Great, you may say, but what the hell does this have to do with
mountain biking?
Many mountain bikers just want to ride their bikes and have fun
and fitness seems to be a four letter word, read an article that puts it in
perspective here.
But really it comes down to bracing to keep the hips and spine
aligned. One of the coaching cues on the Heel
Tap drill is not to suck in the
gut, but to press the small of the back into the ground using your abs to tilt
your hips back, or down in this case. I was very weak in this movement
pattern. My back would actually click if I did not practically cramp my
abs to hold my spine down! Now I was on to something! Along with
Strength Sides; Staying
Tight in the bottom of a Squat, I came to understand, train and change
my bad habits and "You need to straighten your posture and suck in
your gut. You need to pull back your shoulders and tighten your butt."
When you pull the front of your pelvis up with your abs, your glutes
reflexively contract, and both stabilize your spine
I started applying this on the bike and found to my amazement that
it really helped. Particularly toward the end of a climb when I normally
would be gassed, I felt an extra kick. Or when my back was acting up,
bracing would keep it in check. Bracing also helps you keep from bobbing
on the saddle at a high cadence seated spin. I started to explain this to
a friend, who among other things, is a bike fitter and he immediately thought I
was going to say "rock your hips forward", which is the common wisdom
of bike fit. I said no, even though, I have described it the same way
before also, leaving out the bracing to let the belly hang for breathing of
course. There are times that you rock your hips forward, the key is to keep the abs braced to stabilize your platform.
It is easier to understand it from a squat perspective.
James Wilson advocates standing up as the primary power position and not
the pseudo standing/quasi hovering seated position. He suggests literally a squat, one
leg at a time (you push away the pedals instead of the ground). You need
to brace your abs while you apply force to the pedals.
Bracing your abs also helps, in the seated position and even more
important in the quasi standing hovering over the saddle position. Unlike
Bike James, I will not argue the value of each, because I think each is an
important weapon to have in your arsenal. It is easy to let the let the
abs slack off and be over powered by the rectus femoris (part of the
quadriceps) and a tight psoas. Both flex the pelvis, leaving the pelvis
unstable, wasting energy and causing a problem in the lower back.
I have a friend that told me to squeeze my abs when I lift heavy
objects. Now I know how! When I lift a
heavy object, I visualize scooping it up, with my pelvis as the scoop.
Just apply these principles to pedaling a bike.
