Cyclingnews Fitness Q&A - September 15, 2010

Image 1 of 3

Petacchi also wanted his saddle just right(Image credit: Fotoreporter Sirotti)

Got a question for the fitness panel? Send it to fitness@cyclingnews.com. Emails may be edited for length or clarity, but we try to publish both questions and answers in their entirety.

- My right foot is more to down than my left (I think may be wrong, but this could cause a slight leg length issue as the pointed foot makes my right leg effectivley longer)
- After a while I get a slight pain in the bit slightly above where the tounge of the shoe meets the foot only on my left side
- I feel like there is more weight on my left side (feel this in my tricep/shoulder blade)
- My left calf/foot sometimes feel like it is twisting

The key to understanding your predicament is that we need to be as functionally symmetrical as possible to interact with a bike with lowest chance of injury and best potential for performance. Any challenge to the stability of a rider's position from any source will evoke a compensatory response. All patterns of compensation on a bike work by further increasing the natural human tendency to asymmetry.

1. An arch that drops under load on one or both feet.
2. Too high a seat height. For years I've noted that most people sit too high (unless they are very tall in which case most really tall people sit too low), maybe you are too.
3. Much tighter in left side hip flexors and lower back
4. Shorter leg on either side
5. Jammed sacro iliac joint on the left
6. Bar height that is too low or too far away
7.Poor foot cant on the pedal on one or both sides.
8. Not enough foot over the pedal
9. Marked right cerebella hemispheric motor control dominance

Over the past few weeks I have been toying with the idea of having a gap year before I go to uni to complete a personal challenge to either raise funds for tuition or for charity. Mick Ives is obviously incredibly fit, but my question is: would it be physically possible for a teenager like myself to complete a challenge similar to that of Mick Ives, and complete the routes of the 3 grand tours in the same number of days as the professionals with the time frame that I have to prepare? The challenge would take place in 2012.

The psoas plays a complicated role in movement and posture and is working in just about any posture we can maintain except lying in bed or similar. The psoas helps maintain an upright posture when standing or sitting; it helps flex the spine forward; tilt the pelvis forward, lift the upper leg, turn the leg inward and outward and plays a part in stabilising the spine. In short it has a complex role and is working almost the entire time that we are conscious.

Knowing this and the complex role the psoas plays in movement and posture, it is hot hard to see that a tighter than ideal psoas can play havoc with our movement patterns, (and potentially) be the source or part of the picture of back pain, bulging or ruptured discs, lumbar degeneration, compression of the femoral and sciatic nerves, groin pain, excessive flatulence, front of thigh pain, constipation, femoral nerve pain, sciatic pain and a long list of other ailments.

In addition, and more specifically cycling related, a tighter than ideal psoas through a process called 'Reciprocal Inhibition' causes tightened, weakened glutes and tightened hamstrings. Our glutes are the largest, most powerful muscle group in the body and anyone who is serious about their cycling performance needs to have their glutes working properly. This won't happen with a psoas that is too tight. How common is a psoas that is too tight?

- I went in to the ride with over 3k miles of cycling this year same as last
- This was accumulated by doing approx 200 miles per week commuting and EM rides.
- In addition to this I did min of one hour tempo twice per week
- One day each weekend I would do 65-80 miles with 8-13 mile climbs at 5-7 percent
- The following day I would do light EM rides for recovery
- The only things I changed this year from last was I did 2 days per week of high intensity max effort two minute intervals which I did to make me faster
In June I did a 500-mile week-long tour of Colorado but kept my efforts less than 80 percent of max HR

- At the beginning of the Etape I noticed my HR was unusually high.
- I took it easy up the col du Marie Blanc
- Unfortunately this was the best I felt all day.
- I struggled to maintain 7mph up the col du Solour (typical climb speed is 8-10mph
- When I got to the Tourmalet I thought I was going to have to pack in.
- I was very uncomfortable on the bike I could not spin and had to stop approx every mile to stretch and try to gain some strength to continue and felt like I was over heating

If you really only did two riding days in the two weeks before the big day, that in itself would explain having a terrible day at l'Etape. I have many times had riders who were in great shape report lousy performance the first few days back from a week of lay off. In particular when a rider has had two or more days off in a row, the heart rate almost always rises unusually easily and stays high for the power generated.

I used to have a Polar with power (crashed last year and broke it, and have not replace it) that showed how equal your pedal stroke is and I use to get 48 percent-52 percent per leg and even 50 percent-50 percent at times, but I always felt like I was limping while pedaling and did drop my right hip (wife watched from above and behind while on trainer) but never really had any problems (sometimes right IT band hurt) and could ride 100 miles with no discomfort.

Last winter I had a bad case of hip bursitis in my right hip, treated with two cortisone shots and physical therapy. Both my orthopedic and physical therapists are bike riders and said the bursitis could have been caused by improper bike fit causing me to do some adjusting with my fit. I placed a 3mm shim under my right cleat to address the leg length difference, moved my saddle height up and down, back and forth until I settled on the above numbers (have always been bad about moving my saddle up and down trying to find that perfect spot).

Now my left quad seems to be working harder and burns before my right quad (to the point that while doing intervals I have to stop because my left quad starts burning so bad) and I feel like more of my weight is on the left side of my butt while on the saddle. I readjusted my cleats moving them forward about 5mm but still under the ball of my foot but now the front of my left knee tends to get sore.

You probably do need a shim under the right foot but only experimentation will let you know how much; but everything you describe - more pressure on the left sit bone, quad burn etc, suggests that your seat is too high and this challenge to your position means you will do what you have likely spent a lifetime doing, which is look after the shorter right leg. That means that you are dropping your right hip and causing your left leg to reach too far to the pedals.

Unless you have accumulated injuries in the meantime, you can get your VO2-max at age 50 back about where it was when you were in your 20s. The research says that athletes who maintain a high level of training maintain their VO2-max at least out to about age 55, and probably more, though 10 years ago when I was doing my library research on this topic there weren't enough 60+ year olds training as much as they did when they were 20 to create a statistically significant data set, so it's possible that VO2-max can be maintained even beyond 55.

There are two elements to training to maximise aerobic power. First is to remember that we are talking about aerobic power: you want to do aerobic base sort of training to optimize VO2-max. Second is that when you test VO2-max you want to make a very hard effort and not blow up mentally. You want to keep going until your muscles give out even while you maintain effort and motivation. That takes some practice at very high intensities.

I'm not sure why you would train specifically to ace a VO2-max test, but if that were really your goal, I'd have you ride base pace, every other day for two months, then add one day per week where you go flat out until you blow for two five-ten minute intervals (after a good warm up and with some recovery in between of course). When you've been doing those for about four weeks, you'd be ready to test.

Scott Saifer (www.wenzelcoaching.com) is head coach, CEO of Wenzel Coaching.com and has been coaching cyclists professionally for 18 years. He combines a master's degree in Exercise Physiology with experience in 20 years of touring and racing and over 300 road, track and MTB races to deliver training plans and advice that are both rigorously scientific and compatible with the real world of bike racing.

Carrie Cheadle, MA (www.carriecheadle.com) is a Sports Psychology consultant who has dedicated her career to helping athletes of all ages and abilities perform to their potential. Carrie specialises in working with cyclists, in disciplines ranging from track racing to mountain biking. She holds a bachelors degree in Psychology from Sonoma State University as well as a masters degree in Sport Psychology from John F. Kennedy University.