bigfred 

Do you not see the contradiction? The only time you've experienced back pain was on a touring rig with a "pretty high front end" and yet, you propose that core strength makes little difference when in an upright position.

I couldn't disagree more with the idea that "core strength" is only advantagous when in a bent over, closed hip, position. In my experience core strength and flexibility aids general back health and fitness across all of life. Standing, sitting, walking, cycling, gardening, all of it.

To those of you who are procrastinating on addressing your flexibility and core strength, I highly encourage you to begin. Unless your doctor has advised otherwise, you don't have to have already lost weight to begin working on these things. There was a very inspirational video recently reposted about the overweight, former para-trooper, who got off his crutches and walked again. Yoga and core exercises seem to have featured heavily in his transformation, even from an obese and physically disabled state.

Just go do it. For some it needs to be a time or period that you committ to. For, me a casual approach where I grab opportunities throughout the day works better. While strenuous yoga can require a good warm up before getting into it, there are a number of leg, hamstring, back and trunk stretches that can be performed at any time without concern for injury.

Yes, I get teased a bit at work about how much stretching I do. But, some of my co-workers are starting to see the benefit and even join in from time to time.


Really, the gains to be found from working on core strength and flexibility are not imaginary. And, while some may propose that it has limited potential to improve cycling "performance", I can attest to having observed a Retul fit of a national age grouper caliber rider that ultimately focused on their need to work on core strength in order to better anchor their pelvis and eliminate excess wasted motion. The logic being, that as one gets stronger legs realative to ones weight, the saddle contact point becomes less and less effective and you increasing rely on pedals and bars as your two primary load bearing points. Subsequently, the trunk needs to become increasingly strong in order to effectively transmit the power the legs develop to the bike instead of rocking the pelvis back and forth.

This point was further hammered home to me by Mrs. Fred, who while spectating an ITU triathlon commented on how it appeared that the riders transitioned seemlessly from seated to standing and did so frequently. I pointed out that the power differential between the two positions for them was minimal and that effectively, for them, it was little more than a slight movement of the pelvis up and forward. Even when seated they were putting out power that was on the brink of them needing to hold negative pressure on their hands to keep themselves in position.

Anyone telling you that core strength and flexibility don't have an important role across all of cycling from toodling along sitting bolt upright with the majority of your weight supported by your behind and subsequent load transmitted through your back, to leaning forward in a road position with the weight that must be supported by your hands being determined by back strength, to performance cycling where negative pressure against the hands neccessitates a strong core to tranfer power to the pedals, probably shouldn't be relied on.