Part 2/3: Intermediate Cycling Hip Exercise

https://youtu.be/pRzo9yryk7A

Cycling Hip Exercise Part 2/3

This is part 2 of 3 on our series of hip stability in cycling.  In part 1 we woke the muscle up and now we're going to challenge it a little bit with the resisted crab walk.  This exercise demands a little more contraction of the muscle than part one but is still attainable for most athletes.This is where we begin to control knee motion a bit more and so if you have trouble with that on the bike you might notice you're addressing your pedals a little differently.Notes:  During this cycling hip exercise it's especially important that you keep your chest and shoulders up -- we don't want to be leaning forward, as this can change the way certain hip muscles activate.    Control the motion of the "step out" and the "step to" -- don't let the band pull your feet back together too quickly.

Pro-Tip:

As you improve with this exercise you can enhance your hip and knee control on the bike, even at greater amounts of hip flexion by maintaining a deeper squat position through the exercise.  Just make sure that you still keep your chest and shoulders up and square.  This can approximate the hip control you'll want at the top of the pedal stroke when you're in your greatest amount of hip flexion.It may be good at times, even as you do this exercise, to revisit the basic cycling hip exercise we did in part 1, just as a means of keeping that muscle's firing pattern readily at hand.But once you feel like you can do this one with nearly complete control and maintain your upright posture, try exercise #3 -- the off-plane resisted lunge.As always, let me know in the comments below if you have any questions or improvements.