Fitness questions and answers for July 6, 2004

Form & Fitness Q & A

Got a question about fitness, training, recovery from injury or a related subject? Drop us a line at fitness@cyclingnews.com. Please include as much information about yourself as possible, including your age, sex, and type of racing or riding.

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.

Kelby Bethards, MD received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University (1994) before obtaining an M.D. from the University of Iowa College of Medicine in 2000. Has been a racing cyclist 'on and off' for 20 years, and when time allows, he races Cat 3 and 35+. He is a team physician for two local Ft Collins, CO, teams, and currently works Family Practice in multiple settings: rural, urgent care, inpatient and the like.

Fiona Lockhart (www.trainright.com) is a USA Cycling Expert Coach, and holds certifications from USA Weightlifting (Sports Performance Coach), the National Strength and Conditioning Association (Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach), and the National Academy for Sports Nutrition (Primary Sports Nutritionist). She is the Sports Science Editor for Carmichael Training Systems, and has been working in the strength and conditioning and endurance sports fields for over 10 years; she's also a competitive mountain biker.

David Fleckenstein, MPT (www.physiopt.com) is a physical therapist practicing in Boise, ID. His clients have included World and U.S. champions, Olympic athletes and numerous professional athletes. He received his B.S. in Biology/Genetics from Penn State and his Master's degree in Physical Therapy from Emory University. He specializes in manual medicine treatment and specific retraining of spine and joint stabilization musculature. He is a former Cat I road racer and Expert mountain biker.

Since 1986 Steve Hogg (www.cyclefitcentre.com) has owned and operated Pedal Pushers, a cycle shop specialising in rider positioning and custom bicycles. In that time he has positioned riders from all cycling disciplines and of all levels of ability with every concievable cycling problem.They include World and National champions at one end of the performance spectrum to amputees and people with disabilities at the other end.

Pamela Hinton has a bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology and a doctoral degree in Nutritional Sciences, both from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She did postdoctoral training at Cornell University and is now an assistant professor of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia where she studies the effects of iron deficiency on adaptations to endurance training and the consequences of exercise-associated changes in menstrual function on bone health.

Steve Owens (www.coloradopremiertraining.com) is a USA Cycling certified coach, exercise physiologist and owner of Colorado Premier Training. Steve has worked with both the United States Olympic Committee and Guatemalan Olympic Committee as an Exercise Physiologist. He holds a B.S. in Exercise & Sports Science and currently works with multiple national champions, professionals and World Cup level cyclists.

Richard Stern (www.cyclecoach.com) is Head Coach of Richard Stern Training, a Level 3 Coach with the Association of British Cycling Coaches, a Sports Scientist, and a writer. He has been professionally coaching cyclists and triathletes since 1998 at all levels from professional to recreational. He is a leading expert in coaching with power output and all power meters. Richard has been a competitive cyclist for 20 years

Andy Bloomer (www.cyclecoach.com) is an Associate Coach and sport scientist with Richard Stern Training. He is a member of the Association of British Cycling Coaches (ABCC) and a member of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES). In his role as Exercise Physiologist at Staffordshire University Sports Performance Centre, he has conducted physiological testing and offered training and coaching advice to athletes from all sports for the past 4 years. Andy has been a competitive cyclist for many years.

When I eventually got back on my bike, I was not surprised at my lack of form - being constantly dropped by training partners who weeks before, I had left for dead! But as I say, I expected this and have been slowly working on my stamina and strength to return to my previous levels. Again, this has been quite a slow - and at times very frustrating - process for me, especially as I've found doing high-intensity rides or sprints and recovery from these efforts VERY difficult! So any advice you can offer would be most welcome! But the thing that has perturbed me most is that my weight has suddenly jumped up inexplicably!

I have always been a measly 115-117lbs (I'm only 5ft 6in tall, 44yrs old and have held this weight since my 20s) and in fact, was trying to get this down to 110lbs. Although I eat next to nothing and am extremely careful about what I put in my body when I do eat (I am vegetarian, drink hardly any alcohol and avoid sugar, salt, fried foods etc like the plague) my weight has suddenly shot up to 121lbs. Despite cutting down my food, doing even more rides (riding on an empty stomach incidentally) and exercise, my weight refuses to come down! The problem seems to be particularly around my waist - where I have now developed a paunch and love handles have suddenly appeared! (although I didn't exactly have six-pack chest/abdomen before my accident, I was fairly lean in this area).

The big difficulty for me (due to my injuries) is that I still find it pretty painful doing sit-ups and trunk curls to work on my stomach and side muscles. Please can you recommend a way I CAN get my stomach side muscles lean and slender again as well as explain why this sudden weight-gain has happened to me? I also wondered if you can suggest a method to get my weight back down to 115lbs - and hopefully 110lbs!!

Here's a great exercise that will augment your cycling and only requires common gardening equipment. Get yourself a pointed shovel, head out into your backyard, and start digging. The muscular direction is similar to cycling as you stand on the shovel and push it into the earth. Go down about three or four feet deep, then walk back inside and get your bathroom scale, take it out there and throw it in the hole. Then cover it up and jump up and down on it to really pack the earth down nice and solid. This adds a good weight-bearing aspect to the exercise that will be good for bone density, and it also will make it more difficult for you to ever retrieve this instrument of guilt that is making you miserable for no reason whatsoever.

I'll leave the weight loss to the experts but a side issue given the injuries you have had is that your rib cage and shoulder complex will in the short [medium?] term be tighter than pre accident. This would mitigate against breathing efficiency. Find out what you have to do to firstly stabilise and secondly regain flexibility in the affected areas. Once you can fully fill your lungs, you will be able to train harder or longer and rip off some of that weight.

Are there any medical reasons why it shouldn't be possible to continue racing (time trials of 10 miles / 25 miles) through the early stages of pregnancy? I have been competing in time trials road races and short distance triathlons for 10 years now and have been trying to fall pregnant for the past four years. For the first two years of trying to get pregnant I cut back on my training (from 10-15hrs/week to 5hrs/week and at a much lower intensity) and didn't race for a season. I have never fallen pregnant or miscarried during this time but doctors tests show it is just a case of unexplained infertility and that I should get on with my life while continuing to try for a baby. Cycling and in particular competition keeps me sane. It does make it harder to plan a full season's racing and training, and makes long term goals seem a bit blurred - I tend to focus on Plan A (train and race as planned), with a backup of Plan B (should I actually fall pregnant).

I am a passionate female cyclist aged 30. I have a posture problem. I am currently having my pelvis re aligned but I have been diagnosed by x ray as having my right femur shorter than the left by nearly an inch. I have constant pain in my knee and foot. Is there any magical way in which to set my bike up to accommodate this? I have heard of putting a wedge in your cleat but this would not work for me as my length diff is in Femur and not is shin/calf. As I sit on my saddle and clench my knees to my top bar the right knee is 1 inch further back towards the saddle than the left.

Without know more about your knee and foot pain, I don't think it's appropriate (or possible) to give more specific direction, but I can respond to the correction of your leg length discrepancy (LLD). First, please understand that there are functional LLD's and actual LLD's. The latter can only be truly determined by a proper x-ray designed to discern an LLD. And whether there is or is not an actual LLD, the body can function as if there is an LLD (or can actually contribute to or mitigate some or all of an actual LLD).

I have been suffering from runners knee a few times in my 12 year career. I am now 27 and had a three year stint of runners knee from 1998-2000. In 2000 I took a year away from racing, before I again started racing seriously in 2002 with the Crocodile Trophy in September. In 2003 I raced The TransAlp, the Crocodile Trophy and Laruta without any knee problems apart from the occasional bruising after a crash.

There are a multitude of possible reasons for what you describe, all to do with knee tracking. Knees are a hinge joint that only like to work in a single plane. The factors that can prevent ideal tracking are usually because of problems of the ankle/ foot at one end or problems with the hip/lower back at the other end. Problems of the foot ankle are generally easily resolved with an eversion of the foot in shoe of the affected side. I suspect your problems are not that acute if they take 220kms to make their presence felt. Try an arch support style insole from a chemist or build up the inner edge [side nearest the crank] with some soft adhesive backed tape 2 -3 mm thick. If your problems with knee tracking are caused by issues with your hip or lower back the only 100% solution is to resolve those with the help of the appropriate health professional.

I have two questions about leg muscles, neither of which is actually related to me. The first is, I remember a photo from round 3 of the Track World Cup in Manchester of sprinters Damien Zielinski and Florian Rousseau. As the caption below the photo notes, Rousseau's legs look quite a bit different than Zielinski's, namely Rousseau's veins and tendons are clearly visible, while Zielinski's legs, though muscular, look quite smooth. Why is that? Obviously Zielinski is just as fast, as he went on to win. Is that something that changes significantly with age?

My next question has to do with road cyclists, not track sprinters. From what I've gathered, strength training and weight lifting has, at best, limited positive effects for a cyclist, especially someone who is already fit. My question is, why do many professional cyclists look like they've been in the gym five days a week for years? I realize that the "pure climbers" are very lean, very skinny riders, but other riders who do well in the mountains - I'm thinking here of Ullrich, Armstrong, etc. - as well as the sprinters still have very muscular legs. Is this increased size a byproduct of being on the bike basically year-round? Is it helping/hurting them at all?

I have seen several physiotherapists and they all point to a tight psoas on the left side as the main culprit. After performing a regular stretching routine for a couple of years the problem is only slightly better. Following a Pilates course for the last year has made the problem better but it's still keeping me from racing longer events. Could there be some problem on the opposite side that needs stretching or strengthening that should be done as well? If I could have a list of all the muscles that should be stretched and/or strengthened I believe that I could achieve a more effective improvement.

I'm a 20 year old male who's been road cycling for about 6 months. I'm 5'10'' and weigh 135 lbs. Yes, I know, pretty skinny. I've decided to start riding a little more this summer and have noticed that two new little knee sores have begun to emerge. The first is located exactly at the back of my left knee. I've recently raised my saddle height about 1.5 cm and think this might be the reason. But I'm holding off lowering the saddle again because I just don't feel like I'm pedaling an efficient stroke when I'm seated any lower. Yet, I don't see why this pain would emerge only in one knee if both legs are extended a little bit more. I actually feel this pain the next day instead of while I'm riding.

The symptoms that you describe can be accounted for by a number of scenarios. I will assume that you are typical in this matter otherwise this reply will be in danger of becoming a book. What you describe is most likely to be the left leg overextending [pain behind knee] and the right knee not tracking well [pain below and to the outside of kneecap]. The most likely cause of this is a twisted pelvis; specifically the top of the right ilium [right half of pelvis] is likely to be anterior [forward] to the left. This is common either because of a measurable leg length discrepancy or a functional asymmetry.

This is more of a question about the nature of fitness than a personal question, but it does involve me. I've been doing a lot of recreational mountain biking over the past 6-7 years, but only recently got involved in road. Last June I began training for my first century and completed the century at the end of August. I was so thrilled with riding that I decided to join our school's cycling team. I rode a lot and fairly hard for the next 4 months, eventually riding around 200 miles a week. Then I got burned out (never even made it to a race) and didn't really ride the bike at all until now. I'm interested in once again trying to race (Cat 5) again in our school's team - first race in February. How fast will my fitness come back? What can I do to prevent burning out again? I'm 6'2'', 165 pounds and am 21 years old. I live a really active lifestyle in general, always doing something like surfing, ultimate frisbee and others.

I am curious whether fitness levels have any bearing on amount of calories consumed during riding. For example, if Lance and a recreational rider like myself (assuming I was the same weight and had the same wind resistance profile as Lance) were to ride side by side over 100 miles, and you normalized for his better technique, would we not burn the same calories? After all, we're both doing the same amount of work in a pure physics sense. However, my perceived exertion would be so much higher, intuitively it would seem I'm burning more.

Shortly after Arnaud Tournant broke his own world record in La Paz I wrote a very critical letter to his trainer. My conclusion based on my analysis of the split and lap times in La Paz of Arnaud Tournant compared with those of his recent winning world 2001 championship ride in Antwerp and the 1 kilo of Theo Bos (world junior champion 2001 in Trexlertown on a similar 333,333m concrete outer track), was that in particular the second half of the kilometre was not at all in accordance of the principal laws of 1 kilometre cycling.

If I ride 1 kilometre maximal but with the 2nd half (slightly) downhill I will achieve a better time based on the benefit of descending (quite obvious). But there are still other factors involved: being tiring all the time en route riding downhill in this phase will be easier and because of the higher speed I'm finishing earlier and regain so to speak the bigger losses in the latter seconds of any horrible 1 kilometre race. This is by comparison what happens with riding at very high altitude in combination with a proper big gear. And let's not forget another factor: the benefit of riding at high altitude is not linear but exponential since air resistance also increases exponential.