Hanging On
Because your hands do a lot of the work while you’re riding, they’re prone to fatigue, even damage. Most problems can be prevented by frequently changing hand positions. One of the great advantages of the drop-style handlebar that’s found on many road and touring bicycles is that it provides many different grips. It’s possible to grab on the drops, on the tops, on the brake lever hoods and elsewhere. Every ten minutes in fact, you should take another hand position. This will alleviate pressure on the nerves in the palms that can cause numbness and tingling, while helping to keep your upper body relaxed.
There are fewer options on mountain-style handlebars and other upright designs. If you have bar ends, use them. And don’t rule out gripping portions of the bar just because they’re bare metal. If there’s a place to rest your hands safely (always maintain a secure grip), by all means move them there occasionally for a change.
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Pedaling
Ideally, you should relax and let your feet and ankles assume a natural position while pedaling. But there is one tip that may help smooth your pedal stroke and provide a power boost on climbs: If you can learn to pull straight back on the pedals when each reaches the 3 o’clock point on the stroke, you’ll discover with practice that you can generate more power.
Most people focus on the downstroke. But this part of the stroke is natural. Even if you didn’t think about it, you’d manage fine. The key to smoothing the stroke and making it as round as possible is training yourself to pull back. The motion is similar to what’s used to scrape mud from the bottom of your shoes. If you want to immediately feel what it can do for you, try it the next time you’re riding uphill. With enough practice, you won’t have to think about it and your pedal stroke will become rounder and more efficient.
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Climbing
Speaking of hills and hand positions: usually it’s best to stay off the drops on climbs. When you’re bent over that low, the diaphragm is compressed making it difficult to breathe deeply. Placing your hands on the brake lever hoods will open your chest allowing your lungs to expand more. This works nicely when seated and standing. If you want even more air when seated, place your hands right next to the stem a position that will raise your torso and open your lungs fully.
When you stand to climb, relax! There’s no need to choke the handlebars, bar ends or brake hoods with a vise-like grip. Doing so will only tense the upper body, make it more difficult for you to react to surprises and tire you out faster. Instead, use a loose grip and let your legs and body weight do the work as you rock the bike slightly side to side.
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Cornering
One crazy rule of cycling is that you should never look where you don’t want to go. And it’s true that the more you stare at an obstacle, the more likely it is, you’ll run right over it. This can be a dangerous problem in corners. If you fixate on the line you’ve picked to carve the corner, you may ride right out of the turn and off the road.
I recommend looking to the inside of the turn. And don’t just turn your eyes. Actually rotate your head slightly so you’re looking just to the inside of the line you want to follow around the bend - or in a tight turn, almost at the road’s edge or centerline. This will make it much easier to hold the correct line around scary corners. Be safe though. Practice cornering techniques at slow speed until you’re comfortable.
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Descending
Being that it’s most efficient machine in the world, it should be no surprise that a bicycle pointed downhill can accelerate frighteningly fast. You could hit the brakes every time to get things back under control. But that might lead to skidding, wears the brake pads and could surprise following ride partners. A sensible alternative is changing body position to slow down. By sitting taller or moving from gripping the drops to the tops and spreading your legs a bit, your body will catch much more air, which will slow you down parachute style. Of course, this trick only scrubs off some speed. If you really need to slow hard, use the brakes.
Many cyclists experience a terrifying phenomenon on fast downhills called speed wobble. What happens is, at a certain speed the bike begins to shake, sometimes wobbling violently. Many things can cause this to happen and it’s not always the bike’s fault. So it’s good to know ways to prevent and stop it should you experience it.
Try this: clamp your knees against the top tube, which braces a main frame member, and should stabilize the bike and stop the wobble. Riders who’ve experienced wobble learn to always rest a knee against the top tube when descending fast as insurance.
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Shifting
Most people don’t shift enough, which leads to premature drivetrain wear, sore knees (or worse) and one tired rider. Here’s how to shift a bicycle: Think of yourself as the bike’s engine. Like an auto engine, you’re most efficient pedaling at a certain rate, usually from 70 to 90 pedal revolutions per minute. To maintain this efficiency, shift every time you feel your pedaling rate (called cadence) slow or speed up. Following this rule, on a rolling course, you’ll be shifting almost constantly to maintain that steady cadence. But at ride’s end, you’ll be fresh while a ride partner who shifts less will be spent.
How do you know what gear to select? First, don’t get confused by the many choices, and don’t worry about harming the bike by shifting it “wrong” — you can’t hurt it as long as you slightly ease the pedal pressure when shifting (you must pedal to shift). And understand that the correct gear is any gear that allows you to pedal comfortably at the moment. There’s no right or wrong gear and there’s no proper sequence to follow. You just shift when your body tells you it’s time for a change.
Shifting the right lever one click makes it slightly easier or harder to pedal. Think of this lever as a way to fine-tune the effort required to pedal. As you pick up speed on a slight downhill for example, you’d click the lever once or twice to shift into a better gear for the speed. Shifting the left lever makes large differences in pedal effort. Think of this lever as a way to make it considerably easier or harder to pedal. Dropping into a valley for instance, you’ll want an easy gear to get back out. But, you’ll probably be in a hard gear because you were just riding downhill. To make the pedaling easy immediately, shift the left lever to move the chain onto a smaller chainring providing much easier pedaling.
If you’re at all nervous about shifting, practice. A good way to do this is to shift the bike when it’s supported on a stand. You might place the bike on a trunk-style bike rack or in a repair stand, hang the nose of the seat on a low branch, or ask a friend to hold the bike off the ground by the seat. Once the bike is supported, use one hand to pedal and the other to shift while watching the chain move over the cogs and chainrings. With a few sweeps of the levers, you’ll get a clear understanding of what’s going on back there and should feel more comfortable about shifting a lot while riding.
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Perfect Your Pedaling
It’s normal to hop on a bike and push down on the pedals. But, if that’s all you do, you’ll never develop a smooth, efficient pedal stroke. Practice this instead: When the pedals reach 3 o’clock on the pedal stroke, pull back with a swiping motion as if you are wiping mud off the bottom of your shoes. You’ll notice an immediate boost in power, especially on hills. And, if you focus on this technique for only a few rides, your pedal stroke will smooth out and become far more efficient. In time, you’ll do it automatically. BACK
Palm Protection
Two nerves run through your palms and they can become painfully numb from cycling. In fact, my high-school chum Bruce Holden once lost the feeling in both hands for six weeks after a ride we took into the White Mountain of New Hampshire. What’d he do wrong? He made three serious mistakes: 1 He rode without gloves (always ride with comfortable, nicely padded cycling gloves because they save your hands and also provide palm protection if you crash); 2 He gripped the bars too tightly (relax your grip); and 3 He didn’t move his hands around to different parts of the handlebars (every 10 minutes move your hands and grip in a different place). Avoid these mistakes and you should avoid palm problems. BACK
Relax!
One of the most common mistakes is riding while you’re too tight in the upper body. If you see someone riding and you see locked shoulders and straight, stiff arms, you’re looking at someone who’s probably going to have a sore neck and arms at the end of the ride and someone who’s tiring out muscles for no good reason. Relax when you’re riding. Keep nice, loose, bent arms. Drop your shoulders and get comfortable. Train yourself to relax by, every 15 minutes or so, shrugging your shoulders to get them to drop and relax. Bring your elbows down and closer together and shake your arms to relax them. Bend your elbows. Exhale. Think about letting all that tension leave your neck, shoulders and arms. You’ll feel a whole lot better and have a lot more control of your bike if you can learn to ride comfortably like this. BACK
Hook Your Thumbs
An important safety measure is always keeping at least one of your thumbs beneath the handlebars. If you can do this, you’ll avoid crashing due to your hands slipping off the bars. This can happen if you hold onto the tops with all your fingers over the handlebars. In this position, if you hit a bump and aren’t prepared, your hands can slip off causing a crash. This common accident can be prevented by simply keeping your thumbs in the right place. BACK
Push-up Power!
If you suffer from a sore neck on rides and you’re satisfied with the fit of your bike, you should try adding sets of push-ups to your workout routine. Even if you only do them a few days a week, I think you’ll find that they make your neck pain go away. This happens because the push-ups strengthen the muscles that support the neck, which means they won’t tire on rides and get sore. BACK
How to Shift
If you think of yourself as the bike’s engine and try to shift frequently to maintain a comfortable and steady pedaling effort, you’ll begin to use the gears more effectively. Keep in mind that shifting works best when you apply only light pedal pressure to the pedals. So shift before the hill gets too steep and never stomp the pedals until a shift has taken place. Most people find a pedal cadence (how many times one pedal goes around in a minute) of about 60 to 90 rpm about right. Find what feels good for you and then shift every time it’s either too hard or too easy to pedal. When you realize that you need to shift, use the right shift lever for small adjustments in pedal effort and use the left lever for major changes in how hard or easy it is to pedal. Most important: don’t be afraid to shift. Shift often and you’ll get good at it and on rides you’ll save energy and feel better. BACK
Corner Fearlessly
When you come into a scary turn, if you can get yourself to look to the inside of the turn (don’t just turn your eyes, turn your head and shoulders) you’ll find that the corner is not so scary anymore and you’ll scoot right around it. BACK
Take Juli’s Advice
Mountain bike champ Juli Furtado once said, “The faster you go, the easier it gets.” It’s great advice. Most of the bike handling problems people have are related to riding the brakes too much. If you can back off the brakes and let the bike roll, you’ll discover the wonders of momentum: with a little more speed, the bike gains stability, it gets easier to hold the good line and you steamroll obstacles that used to give you fits. BACK
Use Bigger Gears Off Road
To make off-road rides smoother and more comfortable, try riding in slightly larger gears. This allows you to support more of your weight on the pedals and get some off your seat, which allows “floating” over, rather than pounding into ruts, roots and other rough stuff. The same trick works riding your road bike over bumpy pavement. Give it a try! BACK
Just Learning?
New cyclists are often afraid to ride on busy streets because they’re not confident getting into the pedals, shifting and braking. You could pedal laps around the neighborhood. A more exciting approach is putting your bike in the car (bring along a cooler with some goodies) and driving to a safe country road. Here you can ride in either/both direction(s) from your car to see some scenery while practicing your skills on a safe road! BACK
