Bike
Fitness Training
Top pro tips on how to increase leg strength
Red Bull’s High Performance Manager, Darren Roberts, on how to build leg strength for riding.
Legs are important in bike sports, obviously it's how you power yourself around. It’s easy to think of leg strength as being about the thighs. After a particular hard ride having sore ‘thighs’ is a tactile reminder that you’ve been using them.
Speed skater Kjeld Nuis
© Jarno Schurgers/Red Bull Content Pool
More than just the thighs
However, the whole leg is important, particularly the part that you might call your ‘hips’ and the glutes/muscles that flex and extend the hips. The link between your upper body and the lower body is the hips and ultimately the effective transfer of power between the two. Broadly you have your quads (thighs), hamstrings (backs of thighs) and finally the largest muscle in the body – your glutes (butt muscles).
If your glute muscles are not working properly you’re missing out on a tonne of muscle power, as well as causing your hamstrings to work overtime. If I want to check what an athletes’ glutes and general leg strength and control is like, I get them to do a single leg squat.
Downhiller Bernardo Cruz working at the DTC
© Marcelo Maragni/Red Bull Content Pool
Equal strength
In some cases, you can find that one leg is stronger than the other, or looks more controlled. This means the athlete may be favouring one leg when pedalling. The most obvious issue with that is they’re losing out on power by not using both legs. Less obvious is they will develop back problems over time from having their pelvis being pulled in different directions from legs with differing strength.
The way to fix this is simply do single leg squats onto a chair, the more you do them the better the leg strength gets. Sets and reps are of course subjective, however here at Red Bull’s Diagnostic Training Centre we tend to go with four sets of however many ‘quality’ reps they can do. We view it as education training for their legs ‘individually’ to try and get the right muscles switched on. We also work on this using single leg drills on a turbo, something which few people do. Everyone thinks they use both legs equally, but even in elite athletes this isn’t always the case.
Leg exercise drill for Marcelo Gutierrez
© Mats Grimsæth/Red Bull Content Pool
Tight hamstrings
Another issue if glutes are not working properly is that hamstrings become over-engaged which is often simply felt as tight hamstrings. This then leads to lots of hamstring stretches to ‘loosen' them, which in fact makes them even more engaged!
This in turn means that their hamstrings are pulling down on the pelvis which can then lead to lower-back pain. Having over-engaged hamstrings also makes them more prone to being injured. They’re already ‘switched on’, so an aggressive pedal push simply asks already switched-on muscles to do even more work.
Single leg exercises help to build strength
© Joey Terrill/Red Bull Content Pool
Feet and ankles
The final link in the chain is your feet and ankles, another forgotten body part in cycle sports. Ensuring your feet and ankles have dynamic strength and stability is as important as any other part. Doing single leg work will help the strength and stability in your feet and ankles, but also doing some proprioception (body awareness) work through single leg balance will help improve performance.
It doesn’t take long or much work to ensure both your legs are working as they should, from your hips all the way down to your feet. With some planning and taking a few minutes every day, you can get the most out of your lower body and your ability to power your bike along.
