Physio Works

To all the spinners our there…

Winter is almost over and that either means that you are suddenly freaking out about getting bikini ready and are thinking about going to gym, or continuing in your normal active gymming lifestyle.

Either way, you are going spinning 🙂

I had the oppertunity to go for my first spinning class last week and am surprised it has taken me this long to try out the exercise type that so many of my clients utilise.

Fisrt and foremost I must tell you all that I cycle frequently and though this spinning thing woudl be a wlak in the park. I jumoed on the bike and was rearing to go.

Right up and till it came time to relax and as a cyclist, I stopped pedaling. This is obviously NOT the thing to do and a full leg and body jerk almost toppeling me and the bicycle I was on taight me my first lesson. This is obviously not a new thing in a spinning class becasue neither the instructor nor other class participants batted an eyelid.

Now that I has made that mistake it was time to analyse what we were doing and why I see so many injuries at the start of the silly season.

Setup

Setting up your bicycle corectly is incredably important. NOt only are you (or at least you should be) pushing yourself to your limits during the class, you are doing it for a full 45 -90 minutes. causing damange becasue of bad setup is so easily avoidable. There are 4 critical changes you should make to your spinning bicycle before you get started.

Seat Height

This is the first and obvious one – if you cant reach the pedals when sitting on the seat it is obvioulsy too high, but lets get a little more                 specific. When you are sitting on your seat, with your pedal at the very bottom  of its revolution cycle, your knee should be slightly bet –             25-35’s.

Why is this important?

If your seat is slightly too high, as you go around the arc, the momentum of the spinning bike will put extra tension through your knee forcing it backwards, and if you have ever pushed your knee too far backwards you will know that it is not a feeling that you want to repeat a few 100 times during a spinning class.

If your seat is too low, you will tend to overuse your quadriceps and strain the hip flexor with the hunched over position. This can also lead to winging of the knee’s as you try and get your legs out of the way on your up stroke. This also increases incidence of knee pain as your patellar tendon works too hard

Seat forward or backwards

Get on the bicycle and place your feet on the pedals (or clip in if you have cleats). Turn the pedals so that the cranks are paralell to the                 floor (both your feet are equal distance from the ground. Now imagine a plum line from the tip of your knee to the ground. This line                       shoudl run directly thorugh the ball of your foot.

Why is this important?

Putting weight through the correct lines of force in the body is key to injury prevention and effective cycling. When you push through the correct pathways you will have more power and pushing the force through the structural scaffolding (bone) is always better than using the weaker connective tissue and muscles.

HandleBars

Start by setting up yoru seat and lowering the bars to the same heigh as the seat. as you get stronfger and your core learns to start working. you can lower the saddle into a comfortable position, you shoud not be pushing down through your arms, it is simply there to steady your upper body while the legs go to town:)

Why is this important?

This was the mistake I made. My handlebars were set too high and after the first set of sprint sessions I could feel the cramping happen in my shoulderblades. The higher the handle bar, the more weight will be on the saddle and the reverse is obviously true. However, when you are sprinting with low resitance as you do in spinning and your handlbars are slightly high, you tend to push your weight through your arms to steady yourself thus putting a lot of strain on the upper back.

So necx time you step into those sweaty glass roomes of spinnign bikes. take those first couple of minutes to get yourself sitting just right and ue the session to give yourslef a good cardio workout without the threat of injury and pain.

So remember your measurments and Have fun!