Cornering on the Bike without Smashing your Legs & SLD for Smooth Pedaling

What is this episode about?

INTRO 0-2:15

Summer! Plants! Liz grows strawberries after five years of trying. They might be tart enough to rip the skin off your tongue but they are still strawberries!

Correction: We mention Amy’s athlete is riding Bike Across America but it is Bike Across Kansas.

Cornering on the Bike

Today we talk about how to manage corners while riding the bike.  We tend to go into a turn too fast and slam on breaks and slow down too much.  As a consequence, we stomp on the pedals to speed back up as we come out of the turn.  This spikes our power or effort and can be hard on the legs and impact our run off the bike.

What we want to do is to slow down as we go into the turn - before the apex of the turn.  We then go through the apex and gradually build speed as you come out of the turn.  

The Single Leg Drill

The push vs pull part of the pedal stroke needs to be developed.  A good drill for this is called the single leg drill (SLD).  It exposes 'weak' parts of your pedal stroke so you can work on strengthening it.  If we think about the pedal stroke as the face of a clock, the driving part of the stroke is about 1 to 5 o’clock.  The toughest parts are often 5-7 and 10-2 (the transition points from the push to pull or pull to push phases) and those weak points are exposed in a single leg drill.  The SLD builds neuromuscular strength as well as actual strength.