Feeling Twisted

I hear these phrases a lot:

“I feel like I can only push with my right leg.”

“I keep getting single-sided saddle sores.”

“My back is in bits an hour into the ride - It never used to bother me but it keeps getting worse”

I am lucky in hindsight for the wealth of understanding it gave me but the above was me for about two years. I had been a bike fitter for a few years already but I could not grasp the issue. A few suggestions from other bike fitters in terms of positioning but nothing seemed to help. I had read every email and article from Steve Hogg but I just couldn’t solve my issues. Chiropractors, Physios, and Sports Therapists all had their advice and good observations but nothing kicked the issue away. This is not to say that their help won’t help, this article is to hopefully explain why just their external help without you taking mastery over your own body isn’t going to work out long term.

Here we have a rider (on the right) with a twist to the right which they could not feel. Left is after doing off-the-bike work for a few months and sitting much squarer on the bike.

So I am hear to say - I get you - I understand the frustration you can feel, it stops you from wanting to do the sport you love. So now you want to know - what’s the fix? I will pre-warn you, this is about to go far beyond bike fitting and most applied sports therapy before we come back around!

The first thing I would say is if your bike setup is wrong you might find you don’t need to go down the rabbit hole, you just need a good bike fit. I’ve had numerous clients present with pelvic asymmetry as severe as 58:42 ( quantified by Gebiomized Pressure Mapping) which has restored to 50:50 just with bike fit adjustments alone. This article is aimed at those who’ve left no stone unturned with bike fit optimization and still have issues.

It’s Complicated

Bodys are asymmetrical. You know this because you choose to write with a dominant hand, kick with one foot, etc (Left Hand , Right Hand by Chris McManus for a rabbit hole of how this comes about). It’s not just your muscles that have asymmetries, It’s your internal organs too. Your liver is usually on your right, your heart is typically larger to the left. You have a dominant eye etc. Then you might have asymmetries which you’ve picked up throughout life- you might have a bad eye causing your visual processing to be mis-calibrated ( how you think the world looks versus how it is). You might have had an ear or sinus infection that has impacted your vestibular system. You might have a wonky jaw from dental issues or an injury. You might also have broken bones, strains, etc.

What makes people twist on the bike then?

There are simple challenges and complex ones. I think a simple one to get your head around could be that you broke your left tibia and it is permanently longer than the right. So you’re body is very likely going to form an asymetrical movement pattern to compensate. Perhaps not an easy fix but the logic is pretty straightforward.

Another easy one might be that you spend all day long at a desk or driving and one hip is flexed more than the other, one shoulder is twisted forward to hold the wheel or the mouse and your body begins to learn that it needs to be strong in this position - so it adapts.

The tricky part is when someone hops onto the bike and they can’t even feel that they are twisted. They might hop off the bike and visually they are standing skewiff but they have been oblivious until now, or even more complicated is they might be fine until they hop onto the bike. It’s the act of pushing down on the pedals or the forward leaning posture that the CNS just can’t manage.

It all comes back to how the central nervous system is operating. Your brain relies on your “senses”. You might think you have five senses ( Popularised by Aristotle) but you have at least 22 ( perhaps 33 - there isn’t a common consensus). The groups are Balance, Kinaesthesis, Proprioception, Pain, Smell, Temperature, Interoception, Vision, Hearing, Taste, and Touch (These can be further split down into sub-senses which is where the lack of consensus begins.) We can weed out a few of them because hopefully, taste buds that can’t handle spice aren’t causing your body not to ride square on the bike! What we are concerned when it comes to how you physically interact with a bike is :

• Balance

• Kinaesthesis (Tendon Stretch and Muscle Stretch )

• Touch ( Pressure)

• Vision

• Pain

• Perhaps Interoception.

You might have had an injury that your CNS learned to avoid causing pain and that pattern became ingrained, or you’ve spent so long with your head tipped to the left that your vestibular system now views that as level. Or you might have a weak or impaired eye that causes you to see the world slightly off to the angle. Honestly becoming a bike fitter I never thought it would get this complex but that is the problem with a practice involving humans and why so often a 40 min appointment with a PT doesn’t magically solve your issues. I could keep going on and on about how inflammation of the liver or the stress and emotion in your personal life is impacting your bike riding but I might lose you before we get to some tangible stuff. So let’s start with the simple stuff..

The First Phase

Control and hone the senses that you can control. There are those that are more difficult to change than others ( ear infections, visual processing, dental challenges etc) but your body is pretty good at switching off and on sensory inputs ( Close your eyes you should still be able to do a squat). So if you can optimise the parts which you can control your body can hopefully work around the ones which you can’t.

First step - Everything you can do to improve proprioception, balance, and kinaesthesis - you should do!

• Barefoot shoes that are wide enough for your feet to move and thin enough for the fascia in your foot to lengthen and contact, zero drop footwear to rebalance you in the sagittal plane, barefoot walks on sand, pebbles, and grass to learn to feel with your feet, etc. (On the bike, this means optimizing your footwear too )

• Practice your balance and build your relationship between your feet, hips, torso, arms, and head. Introduce instability with a bosu ball or mobo board, walk-on beams etc. ( Then on the bike you want to make yourself as balanced as possible).

• Find those old pain points and teach your body to trust them again. Your body doesn’t naturally reset - this is what rehab is about - learning to move through areas that have felt pain and regain confidence. You might think an old injury to your wrist or shoulder is unrelated but it’s probably not.

• Reset your body’s mental picture of muscle tension norms and ranges. This might involve reducing asymmetry caused by lifestyle or ergonomic factors. Be conscious of daily defaults. Keeping a diary of foot pressures really helps you become more consciously aware.

• Learn to move and feel how your joints are controlled by muscular contractions and relaxations. Be deliberate , precise and sloooow. This is the ultimate in muscle control.

• Practice coordination with your eyes closed ( cycling at 20mph makes the world a loosely calibrated blur - your body might struggle without its vision if you don’t train it. )

There are a bunch of different ways to achieve these goals. Pretty much all schools of thought work as long as you understand that it’s not until you learn about your body that you will achieve this level up in function. Reps and sets of poor movement patterns only strengthen compensation patterns*. I have found the teachings of Joanne Elphinston,  Gary Ward ,  Feldenkrais and Thomas Hanna to be very good. The more your brain is aware of how you are moving the better chance it has at re-centering.

Key takehomes

• Breath is a powerful reset button. Do not underestimate or discount

• Don’t let ego or enthusiasm get in the way. A rushed exercise is a pointless one

• If you find a neuromuscular grey area ( A wobbly bit) - this is a key growth area. Practise moving smoothly through these grey areas

The next-next level part is what happens if you do all this movement work and it still doesn’t work? Then you need to be reflective of yourself and your lifestyle

• Do you nail your nutrition? I do not mean carbs per hour on the bike, I mean gut health, vitamins, and minerals, food intolerances etc. Perhaps you are overdoing it with the carb gels?

• Are you hydrated? Balanced electrolytes?

• Are you stressed? Are you carrying psychological trauma?

• Are you sleeping enough?

• Is your blood pressure normal?

• Are you getting enough natural light? Or too much blue light ( screen time)

This will be covered in Part Two - Coming soon!