Today on the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast we focus on all the newbie cyclists and ask our cycling coach Devlin Eyden, about specific niggles being experienced and get some guidelines in terms of strengthening our legs to achieve our goals in our cycling training.  We also touch on strengthening of the arms and again chat about the correct bike setup.

Transcript

Brad Brown:         You’re listening to the Ask Coach Parry podcast, this is our cycling edition and another fantastic question been submitted to the website, coachparry.com, Devlin Eyden joins us once again.

Devlin, today’s question comes in from a newbie, Pamela. She says: I struggle with pain in my wrist and just on the one hand and only when I’m cycling or spinning. Is it a normal part of training or is there something I should worry about? I also want to know, and this is slightly off-tack, what are the best exercises I can do to strengthen my legs and arms for cycling. Is it something she should be concerned about? Should she go and get it checked out and what could be causing it?

Check out those painful wrists when cycling

Devlin Eyden:      Someone with a sore wrist, obviously we’d need to make sure, I’m hoping that there’s no prior injuries or any sort of trauma that might have happened to the wrist itself. There’s a couple of things that can lead to wrist pain, particularly on the bike and I know we’ve touched on it in the past, but I think again, it’s something to drive home, is making sure that the correct bike setting is always done.

Usually with something like wrist pain and hand pain is the ratio from the saddle height to the, either the reach of the handlebars or the drop to the handlebars, could be a little bit severe, especially for someone starting out.

Is your bike set up correctly?

It is quite key to make sure that the setup is correct and there isn’t too much pressure on the hands as well. I think that probably would be my starting point and then to make sure that there isn’t any sort of severe pain. It might be worth checking out. If it is something that needs a little bit of rest, then you can obviously plan around that. Perhaps do more spinning classes or indoor training, where you don’t necessarily have to put your hands on the handlebars the whole time for a session.

With regard to the strength side of things, training side, it’s always going to be vital for you to make sure that you are either in the gym or doing some sort of work at home in terms of strengthening the legs and that.

Strengthening your cycling legs and arms

Typically from a cyclists point of view, I would definitely look at things that are going to focus on glute strength, hamstrings and quads especially. So typically squats, lunges, those are going to be really important exercises. Working more on the leg press and that, which will work the quads quite nicely as well. From a leg strength point of view, there’s those couple of exercises.

When we start talking about more strengthening the arms, my main focus before worrying too much about lifting and strengthening, would be more from a stability point of view.

Things like being on a stability ball, bridging, those kinds of exercises, to make sure that the shoulder and the stability around the shoulder and that, have a good base for you to then build the strength on that. Again, you don’t necessarily need a lot of arm strength on the bike. But you do need a good amount of arm strength in the sense of, like I mentioned, more the stability point of view, so that you aren’t picking up little niggles going forward.

BB:         Awesome stuff, Pamela, thank you very much for that question.

If you are, I’m not sure if you are training for the 94.7, if you do need some help, all you need to do is head over to coachparry.com/947. You can sign up for our upcoming online seminar there and we’ll help you get through to race day.

For all the other general info and questions, if you’re looking for training packages, all you need to do is head over to the website, coachparry.com and check them out there.

Until next time, from myself, Brad Brown and our cycling coach, Devlin Eyden, it’s cheers.