Improve your hip strength and become a better cyclist

[wlm_loginform]We often think of the large muscles of our legs as the main focus in cycling, and this is true.  The quadriceps or quads) and the gluteal muscles (the muscles in our rear end) provide nearly all the power that we press down on the pedals with.  These are the main muscles that work at straightening the knee and hip and drive that pedal down in the power phase.We often think of this motion as linear -- the knees and feet move up and down as we pedal -- but as with nearly all human movement it is not this simple and "uni-planar".  Our knees and feet move side to side as they move up and down.  This side to side or medial-lateral movement isn't abnormal -- to an extent.  Some of this side to side motion is normal because of the shape and structure of our joint surfaces, but when it gets excessive it can create problems on the bike.Certainly there are often changes to the bike or cleats, like those we see in a typical bike fit, but often there's a better solution and it happens to be an exercise.I have a rule about how are muscles work in bike fit and cycling mechanics:

We rely on big muscles to move us down the road, but small ones for our comfort and efficiency.

This is an exercise for one of these small muscles.The muscles I'm talking about are the ones that control hip abduction.  Gluteus medius holds a lot of this responsibility.  When the hip abductors are weak, or uncoordinated, or slow to engage (which is really all the same thing when it comes down to it), we lose the stability of the femur and this shows up on the bike as a knee that drives in toward the bike as we push on the pedals with force.  Now certainly, there are many other causes of the knee to diving in, especially on the bike (see this article on why the knee is the "slave" joint) but there are also many situations where a bike fit change is used as a compensation when an exercise could help to correct the problem.By getting the hip abductors involved more, they will "set the table" for the bigger muscles in the quads and glutes to do the hard work.  Without hip abductor involvement we lose efficiency as the knee drifts off track and some of the force these big muscles put down goes sideways rather than down into the pedal.In addition to efficiency gains we also get resistance to injury -- quad and patellar tendonitis, IT Band symptoms, back pain, saddle discomfort, toe numbness and others all can result from a knee that moves off track.It's important to start with a basic exercise in order to engage the muscle or wake it up, so that's what we'll begin in this video.After you've mastered that exercise, there's an intermediate hip exercise on the way as well.Take me to the Basic Hip Abduction Exercise