Stretch, Flex & Focus

how yoga can help your riding – kaTe haRRiNGToN explains

Bikers love to balance life on two wheels, but a lot of strength, stamina and flexibility is required to cope with the long hours in the saddle.

So we have to be fit and healthy on all levels, and even if we are the body needs adequate rest and serious relief after a long ride. Rather than trying a temporary method like soaking in a bath, or putting ice packs on aching legs and arms, one of the best and gentlest ways to heal and relax is through yoga.

No other exercise is as effective and restorative. Mention ‘yoga’ to many people and they’ll think of meditation, chanting and weird stand-on-head poses, but the reality is quite different. Yoga is a gentle form of exercise that reduces muscle tightness, increases flexibility, prevents injury and enhances your overall wellbeing. A combination of stretching and strengthening poses, and deep breathing exercises, works as a total mind-body workout.

Yoga keeps muscles and joints strong, stable and supple, calms the nervous system and helps us to remain mindful during the ride. It also reduces recovery time and helps you get back on the bike quicker after a demanding ride.

It also increases body awareness, which is very important while riding, improves core stability and reinforces the muscles around the spine, producing stronger lower back muscles and hip flexors. The more balance and core stability you have, the more control you have over your bike.

Smooth & Calm

Flexibility is another benefit, and something else which enhances bike control. Yoga postures stretch and strengthen the body’s muscles and increase the range of motion, making you more flexible. So you are able to ride more smoothly, shift your weight back and forth better, lean more. The more flexible you are, the better you can ride.

Relaxation is key after a long trip, and yoga offers plenty of relaxing poses and deep breathing exercises that provide instant relaxation and supply the much-needed energy required by the body.

Then there’s the mind. BMF members won’t need reminding that riding a bike requires some serious mental focus – yoga is a great way to calm the mind, which helps increase focus.

Various poses can help with this, increasing your ability to blank out distractions such as body ache, helping you focus on the road. On a long ride, these can help you stay calm and focused, simply by using your breath. In other words, you need strength, flexibility and calm to ride well –yoga can supply all three.

Kate’s Ten Top Tips

1) Wrist Stretch

On long rides our hands get fixed in a gripping position. Every so often during a long ride, stretch out your fingers, palms and wrists. This also helps alleviate arthritis, the pain of which is exaggerated in cold weather.

2) Shoulder Rolls

Hunching over the bars produces tightness in the neck and shoulders. To counter that, hunch your shoulders up to your ears and roll forwards five or six times, then roll the shoulders backwards a similar amount. This acts like a self-massage and will help to loosen, relax and release tightness.

3/4) Cat/Cow

On all fours (not one while sitting on the bike or in a café...), with wrists under shoulders and knees under hips (pad your knees if they are tender), arch and curl the spine around 10 times. Breathe in on the curl – spine dips, shoulders and elbows soften – and exhale on the arching. This relaxes the neck and spreads the upper back as well as getting the synovial fluid warm – rather like lubing the chain!

5) Flexor Stretch

As we sit astride a bike our hip flexors (the muscles which allow our hips to flex) will shorten – this will help to re-lengthen them. Lunge step forward on one leg, gently bring the back knee down and relax into a stretch – gently rock forwards and back for five or six breaths.

6) Tree

This is a balance (standing on one leg, basically) which strengthens the legs and ankles and engages the core. Balance on one leg and rotate the other foot, using your ankle. This helps get movement back into ankles after a day spent in bike boots.

7) Chest openers

Counter balance the effects of forward flexion holding handlebars. Sit or stand with your hands clasped behind your back and squeeze the shoulder blades together to open the chest.

8) Super-Person!

Also known as the Plank, this pose puts the shoulders, back, hips, knees and ankles all in one line – it’s like a press-up, but you hold it in the ‘up’ position. Great for building core strength which helps you to balance on the bike without having to wrestle with your arms.

9) The Shoulder Bridge

Lying on your back, feet on floor, knees up, reach with your longest finger and touch the back of the ankles, then curl the hips up, lifting the lower and mid back away from the floor. This strengthens hamstrings, glutes and lower back, and opens the abdominals after the plank.

10) Breathe Slowly

Perhaps the most important exercise of all – breathe slowly: that’s in through the nose and out through the nose. Breathing slowly will help keep your heart rate down and helps to counter the shortened breath we sometimes adopt unconsciously when riding. Try and count four as you breathe in, and another four to breathe out. Breathe in using the diaphragm and belly, and when exhaling bring the navel back to the spine, keeping the shoulders relaxed.

Kate Harrington – Biker Yoga kate@bikeryoga.co.uk www.bikeryoga.co.uk