Bike benefits

It may seem like a leap to understand how a floor exercise performed on all fours can benefit your riding, but stability of the hips and shoulders (as well as the abdomen) are really important for cyclists.  The gluts are key drivers of the hips and stability at the sides in particular can help you maintain ‘neutral’ alignment with your legs as your pedal, rather than having your knee roll in and out with the up and down.

Weakness in the gluteus medius muscle (at the side of the glut) is often implicated in knee problems too and these four-point exercises can really help activate this area and then subsequently allow you to integrate the muscle into more global or ‘whole body’ strength movements. Equally shoulder stability is important on the bike too. As you hold the bars for hours on end you are stabilising against the force generated by the legs to ensure no effort is wasted and to avoid inefficient and unnecessary shoulder movements.