On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast, our cycling coach Devlin Eyden answers a question about what you can do to alleviate lower back pain while cycling.

Transcript

Brad Brown:        Welcome onto this edition of the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast, it’s great to have you with us. I’ve got our cycling coach, Devlin Eyden with us once again. Devlin, fantastic question in today from Johan. He says that I find that after two or three hours on the bike my lower back gets really sore. Is it a case of an incorrect set up or should I just HTFU and keep training through it?

Devlin Eyden:       With something like this there could be a couple of factors involved. First and foremost would be making sure the bike setup is correct. You obviously want to rule out anything that could cause back pain, like your bike set up. From a point of view in terms of your physical preparation, I think more importantly is having a look at good core training, making sure that your core and your back strength is right, is up there as well as a bit of upper body strength. We’re also focusing largely on, we’re often spending some time on the hands and on the shoulders and that sort of thing.

A strong core is the key to cycling pain free

Making sure that our core training is solid. My recommendation there would actually be to take part in, if you can, if you’re part of a gym, get involved in some Pilates classes which is really good for core strength, it’s good for flexibility, which is the next thing which could also be leading to lower back pain, is your flexibility itself. We tend to all get quite lazy and we get the training done, we get off the bike and we think that’s the end of it and more often than not, it’s actually the flexibility in the hamstring, the glute and the lower back that’s actually what’s leading to the problem than the bike set up itself.

I think if we can just get a little bit more focus there, from a point of flexibility and then a good, core strength program is what’s going to be vital to hopefully eliminating that lower back pain over time.

BB:           Awesome stuff, Johan, thank you so much for that question, Devlin, thank you for your time once again here on the podcast. Don’t forget, if you’d like a customized training program from Devlin, all you need to do is head over to coachparry.com/cyclingcoaching, you can get all the details there and we look forward to having you as part of the Coach Parry online community. Until next time, from the two of us, it’s cheers.