Thank you for your time. What are your top couple of exercises to help with the shoulders and neck while riding a triathlon bike?

Question

Erin Carson · Answer

Hi Chris, the TT bike can be an absolute pain in the butt. It can also put us in a position where the shoulder blades tend to roll up towards the head. So what we want to do is strengthen the lower trapezius. So if you do a quick Google search on where that is, you're going to find. It's rate here. It's down below the shoulder blades. So the best exercise that I use to reset the back with my trafficked. Is I have them go fingertips to the ground long through the arms. Little stretch through the lats. The forehead is going to stay straight down. So your head is going to be in this position. And from right there. We're going to lift the hands up, and just learn to breathe and hold into that position. So, that's the first exercise from rate. Their head is going to be down. Hands are going to be up. The next thing we're going to do is start to bring the hands and the thumbs to the shoulders and then straight back up. Cinch. The elbows next to the side body and reach over your head. And we start to activate and strengthen the lower trapezius because it's actually the rolling up of the shoulder blades that create that tightness around the neck. There's a lot more to go with that, but that's my one of my favorites.

Jess Racz · Answer

I'm gonna go with me. I'm gonna go with my favorite. I use these for just building General posture, but I think it can help with the shoulder and especially as a triathlon athlete with the bike you're over, your back is flex all the time. So basically, what I do, hopefully, you can see, but I start here and I'm going to keep my feet on the ground and I lift up, I can pretend like, I got cones. I'm lifting up as far as I can, and then I'm coming. Back lift up, come back member seat, stay on the ground. And I lift up as high as I can, that's going to be a burner. I usually do. Three sets of 10 with my athletes and most of them can't do that because we're used to just being in these slumped postures all the time, but it's definitely the best one, everyone hates it but it's really good for opening up the back in the thoracic spine and getting your posture in a better position and and you can test that too.

Tim Crowley · Answer

It's a good question, whether the top exercises for training, the shoulders, and the neck and a time trial Arrow type position. I see a couple different things. One is you want to make sure you're doing a lot of horizontal type rowing where you're squeezing, the shoulder blades together because when you're relaxed and arrow position, the shoulder blades going to want to come off of the back. So training the rhomboids, those smaller muscles to control. That would be key because when those start to get 40, just start to get a sharp pain right between the shoulder blades and they'll make you really uncomfortable. An efficient inefficient on the bike. The second one is probably spending more time in the arrow position. You might want to make sure that your position is good. You don't want to be so low, that you turn your head up that you're really, you know, causing pain or stiffness in the neck, should be able to be a good Arrow position just come to tip your head slightly and roll your eyes forward to get a good view because otherwise you'll have your head down more often and that's really not a safe position because you're not, you know, seeing what's in front of you. So Two things is I upper back type, exercises, strengthen the rhomboids spending time in the arrow position? That's comfortable. It may require slip slight adjustments in your and you're fit to find a position. And then gradually spend time in that position to, you know, condition those muscles to, you know, strengthen and be able to hold your head into proper position that you need for, for the duration of your of your race, and for your training,

John Sinclair · Answer

Thank you for the question. What are some couple exercises to help with shoulders and neck while riding a triathlon bike? Well, there's no question that being on those bikes. That's putting you in an odd position for a long period of time. So while there's lots of exercise that we can do Jess and Aaron and Tim talked about a few of them, what we want to also think about is how do I counter strain the connective tissues that are being held in this position for long periods of times? Because we Activate muscles to do their job to pull them back. But if I've been stuck in this position for a long period of time and I'm holding that position for a long period of time, then the collagen is not only going to get dehydrated, it's going to get stuck in there. It's going to be strained and what we would consider a long position for the shoulders and for the neck and the back. So what I've created here is a device that will be used this thing here to help counter strain and let gravity be our buddy. So what I've got here is a dowel that's on two little blocks. I had them built this way and all we do is we pin your head against that dowel and you take some deep breaths and what will happen is gravity is going to act on my head and it's going to slowly push me down. That's going to allow all these tissues to just counter strain and I can maintain this position for quite some time. Just like, I have to maintain that position while I'm on the triathlon. So all you need is a dowel rod and maybe a couple little blocks like a couple of dumbbells that you could put the dowel rod onto and then start positioning and counter straining that tissue first before we go into some activation stuff. So one, we're going to drive some fluids into the area, which is going to be crucial to. We're counter straining, the connective tissue and letting gravity 8 Us in doing. So. And then the third thing we would do is do some of those cool activation drills. at the other coaches Tolkien

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"Thank you for your time. What are your top couple of exercises to help with the shoulders and neck while riding a triathlon bike?"