Body Conditioning for Competitive Cycling

Video Transcript

"Now that we've talked about diet, I'd like to talk a little bit about body conditioning. Obviously, riding your bike is the best training for racing your bike, but cross-training is also important. What happens is you're reducing your bone density by not having any impact in your workout, but yet you're leeching all of this energy from your body in these hard, hard workouts. So, what I like to do is mix it up with, let's say, running. Maybe in the fall, you're going to start running a little bit more. Maybe during the winter, you're going to do some uphill runs, just to get some impact into your training. Also, just so you don't get tired of being on a bike, you're doing something different, and running is just an easy way to do that. Maybe you want to play basketball, maybe you want to do something else. I would recommend not playing a sport where there's a high likelihood that you're going to hurt yourself, because if what you're trying to do is train for cycling and you end up ruining the start of your season because you twisted your ankle, well then it wasn't worth it. But in general, you want to do some kind of cross-training, some kind of other sport. Weightlifting is great, Russian lunges, the basic leg workouts that you can do, I would highly recommend it because you're only going to go so far with your power on the bike, and then to go beyond that, you're going to need some weight training. And there are plenty of weight training programs you can find for cycling that would work great. The other thing is stretching. I've found that when I stretch, it even helps your warmup, because when you get on the bike, your body is already loose. Also, those long three-, four-, five-hour rides, if I've stretched my back and I'm generally looser, generally more flexible before I even get on the bike, I feel that much better. So a daily stretching program is great. Also, early in the season, you can do some deep breathing. So before you're actually even getting into the part of the season where you're doing those heavy, long workouts, you can still be doing deep breathing, and maybe in the morning, 10 times, you're breathing in as deep as you possibly can, and then breathe in some more, and just hold that for a few seconds and let it out and do it again. You're expanding your lungs, you're waking your lungs up, you're saying, "Hey, it's almost bike racing season.""