Learn to Ride Faster and Safer With Bike-handling Drills

By Matt Russ
For Active.com

In my experience, most cyclists take handling skills for granted. Consequently, a lot of crashes can be avoided by being aware of your surroundings and having the skills necessary to react instinctively to emergency situations. By practicing these skills in a controlled environment, you’ll become a faster and safer cyclist.

To get started, find an open area where there’s no traffic (like a parking lot), some orange cones (water bottles can be substituted) and a partner.

Braking: Begin circling the course. Have your partner randomly call out "stop." Bring your bike to a quick, safe, controlled stop. Have your partner stop quickly as well and look at the distance between your bikes. If you have good reflexes and reaction time, the distance between your bikes will be close.

Practice braking in a variety of situations, such as cornering and braking with your partner in front of you (be careful). If you’re a beginner, apply both brakes with even pressure. As you get more experienced, apply slightly more pressure to your front brake.

Cornering: Choose your line through each corner. If you corner correctly, you should clip the apex of the turn. Make sure your inside crank arm is in the vertical position so that your pedal doesn’t touch the ground. Practice cornering inside and outside in both directions and try to pick up your speed each time. Start to sprint out of corners. Set up a slalom course and also practice 180-degree turns.

Looking: A key element of road safety is being able to see what’s going on around you. Beginners have a tough time looking over their shoulder while keeping their bike straight. Have your partner ride several bike lengths behind you. At regular intervals look over your shoulder and call out how many fingers your partner is holding up. Have your partner tell you if you veered or continued straight.

Bumping: This needs to be performed on a grassy field using a mountain bike. Have your partner "bump" you slightly and touch shoulders simulating situations that occur in pack racing. You should get used to contact with other riders without panicking.

Riding position: Practice transitioning smoothly from various riding positions such as sprinting, climbing in and out of the saddle and descending.

Drafting: Have your partner vary his or her speed over the course and try to maintain a constant distance from you partner’s rear wheel.

Performing these drills a few times per season won’t help you much. You have to take what you learn and apply it on the road. Good habits need to be practiced thousands of times before they become good form.

Awareness is your greatest asset when riding in traffic situations. Try to anticipate what drivers are going to do. Eye contact is very important, as is visibility. Constantly check what’s going on around you and stay focused on what you’re doing.

Matt Russ has coached and trained athletes for over 10 years around the country and internationally. He currently holds licenses by USAT, USATF, and is an Expert level USAC coach. Matt has coached athletes for CTS (Carmichael Training Systems), and has been certified by Joe Friel’s Ultrafit Association. Matt’s fitness articles can be found online and magazines such as Inside Triathlon. Visit www.thesportfactory.com or e-mail him at info@sportfactory.com for more information.

Time to Practice Those Handling Skills

By Don Russell
For Active.com

It’s time to start using all that conditioning you’ve been working on. Many of us are just now escaping the confines of the basement and are venturing out into the great outdoors. If we were lucky, we had the opportunity to put in some time with a group of riders, typically once on the weekend. So how are your handling skills? Rusty?

Once of the biggest issues I hear about the early races is that cyclists are concerned about the bike handling skills of the "other" riders. They’re sure that there will be a huge pile up in the last corner of the first couple of crits, and they’re probably right.

I regularly tell the racers I coach to stick their nose into the fray if they can control their position and if not, ride on in and avoid the carnage.

I’ve had more than one Cat 3 or Cat 2 tell me that they don’t like club training races because the "other" riders are dangerous, since they let Cat 4 and 5 racers compete. I usually try to get them to work on their skills and do a series of skill sessions with the newer riders.

Typically, when I conduct these types of sessions, the Cat 4/5s show up and the Cat 2/3s go for yet another tempo ride. I’ve seen enough poor bike-handling by the supposed "experts" to know that it’s not always the newbie who is causing the problems in the pack.

Wheel-touching Exercises
So what types of skills should you work on? Common workouts include wheel touching, which teaches how to handle your bike when overlapped wheels come into contact. I typically do these on grass fields. It’s not true that you will fall down if you tap someone’s back wheel with your front one. My favorite story is the 14 spokes, of 36, that I lost when someone came across and put his rear derailleur in my front wheel. I didn’t go much further, but I also didn’t fall down.

Contact Exercises
Another favorite is contact exercises. This usually starts with basic contact, including putting hands on shoulders and looking backwards. Do you trust your partner to ride around a football field without ever looking forward? Typically we start getting into shoulder and elbow contact and graduate up to two-on-one shoving. Hands stay on the bars at all times. Make sure you practice contact from both sides and don’t just make left or right turns around the field.

Low-speed Turning Skills
One of my favorite low-speed turning skills involves putting down five water bottles in a diamond shape with one in the middle. Use your imagination going around them following various patterns ensuring you make both right and left turns. You can turn this into a speed contest with penalty time for dabs.

Water Bottle Pick Up
I’m betting that everyone has tried picking up water bottles off the ground and setting them back down. When you do this, do it with both hands, preferably not at the same time. There’s a trick to doing this easily, but you’ll figure it out; no track stands. At a junior training camp, they picked chocolate chip cookies off plates.

High-speed Skills
So what about the high-speed stuff? Work on cornering skills, such as counter-steering, handling gravel at speed, pedaling into a corner and when to start again, changing line once you thought you were committed, then start doing all this with friends. If you know someone who needs help, be inventive on getting them to participate.

All of you experts, help the club, team, and coaches out with these sessions, a couple of hours spent doing these may keep you out of the hospital and on the road.

For more information on subjects related to endurance training or for any of your coaching and training needs check out Don and the rest of the coaches from the Peaks Coaching Group at www.peakscoachinggroup.com.

Bike Handling Clinic: Drill That Skill

By Josh Horowitz
PezCycling News

When it comes to working on cycling skills, I always tell people the same thing. If you think you might need to improve your skills you probably should. If you don’t think you need work on your skills, you definitely should! Let’s look at some great drills for helping you to keep the rubber side down.

There are a number of reasons to take one precious training hour per month and devote it to improving your cycling dexterity. One reason is, of course, to improve your ability to maneuver through the pack—whether on a group ride or in a race. Another reason is to improve your safety and the safety of the riders around you. There seems to be a common misconception that some crashes are just inevitable. In my experience this just isn’t true. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that with a combination of experience, skills and mental preparation, ALL crashes are avoidable.

However, the reason that I usually find to be most convincing is that by practicing skills and improving agility on the bike, you will actually become a stronger, faster cyclist. The reasoning behind this is that by being more relaxed and confident on the bike, you will waste less energy through tension and anxiety and you will be able to apply all your energy to turning over the pedals. The most important thing to take away from the drills outlined in this article is not any particular skill or ability, but an overall improvement in your sense of confidence and relaxation on the bike.

You don’t have to be a coach to run a skills clinic. Here is a basic outline of the clinic I run. Find an empty parking lot or a grass field, gather some friends and give it a try.

The Warm-up

Just as your body needs a good warm-up before a hard interval session, your mind needs some early-morning calisthenics to get those neurons firing.

Follow the Leader — This is a fun, easy way to get things going. One rider can take the reins here and lead the group around the parking lot. The idea here is not speed but dexterity. Impose a maximum speed limit or give points for being the slowest to complete an obstacle course without touching down.

Practice sharp turns, cutting in between obstacles and, for a more advanced group, hop a curb or try a track stand. Try to stay as close together as possible. This can be done as an elimination exercise. Keep going until the last rider has to place down a foot or plain falls off.

Note: If you have a spare training bike, skill drills are not the time or place to showcase the new bike you got for Christmas!

Center of Gravity

Just like a gymnast, figure skater, or a diver, there are some things that the body has to learn instinctively. The following series of drills will improve your innate sense of balance.

Ankle Grabbing — This drill involves holding onto your leg while pedaling. What you will find is that flexibility and the length of your limbs has very little to do with success in this exercise. The real key is the ability to push the bike away from the side you are leaning to while continuing to ride in a straight line. By pushing the bike to the side and keeping your center of gravity in the middle, you effectively bring your body lower to the ground.

Start by pedaling the length of the parking lot holding your right calf with your right hand and your left hand in the drops. This should be fairly easy. Try it on the other side. Then see if you can move your hand down to your ankle and hold on to it while you pedal. Once you achieve that, you can try to pedal while holding the heel of your foot. The farther you lean your bike to the side, the lower down you will be able to reach.

The Object Retrieval drill will help develop your sense of balance.

Object Retrieval — This is a natural progression from ankle grabbing. Using the same concept as the above drill, practice picking up water bottles from the ground. Ride slowly up to the bottle and, pushing your bike away from the side you are leaning to, bring yourself low enough to the ground so that you can retrieve the bottle. You can start by trying to knock the bottles over using your left hand and then your right. Move on to picking up the bottles and then putting them down without letting them fall over. From there, you can practice picking up smaller objects such as soda cans or bottle caps.

Contact Drills

If you spend a lot of time riding in packs, you will inevitably make physical contact with other riders. Even if you usually ride on your own, practicing these drills will improve your overall ability to handle your bike. The most important thing to take away from these drills is that a little bit of contact is not a big deal. As with the previous drills, there is a natural progression of exercises.

Look Back — A basic skill that many cyclists lack is the ability to look over their shoulder without coming off their line. For this drill, pick a partner who is roughly your size. Start by riding the length of the parking lot with your right hand on your partner’s shoulder, looking over your right shoulder. Don’t be afraid to lean on your partner. He will keep you going in a straight line. Once you’ve mastered that, practice looking over the outside shoulder. Try to really turn around and look behind you while maintain a straight line.

Elbow Bumping — In this drill, you’ll make some light contact with your partner. With your hands in the drops to prevent your handlebars from hooking (always protect your handlebars when riding in a tight pack), stick your elbows out and ride the length of the parking lot knocking elbows. You can use your elbows as bumpers, letting them absorb the brunt of the impact.

Shoulder Bumping and Leaning — Once you are comfortable with elbow touching, you can practice making direct contact with your shoulders. Once again, keep your hands in the drops to protect your handlebars. Try to stay shoulder to shoulder and progressively increase the strength as well as the length of the impact. Practice leaning into each other and holding it for a few seconds.

The ultimate goal with this drill is to ride the length of the parking lot completely leaning on each other. You will be surprised at how stable you feel, even though you are wholly dependent on the other rider to keep you upright. The take away from this drill is that when you are bumped in the pack, your instinct should be to lean into the impact rather than pull away from it.

Bunny Hopping

These skills are important, not just for safety but also to avoid flat tires and to keep your wheels true. As with the other drills, there is a natural progression here.

Front Wheel — Assuming your parking lot has white lines to indicate parking spaces, practice riding the length of the lot, hopping your front wheel over each line as you cross it. This is mostly done using the arms to pull up on the bars.

Rear Wheel — Now do the same thing but with your rear wheel. You will use your legs to pull up on the pedals and lift the rear wheel off the ground.

Both Wheels — Once you’ve mastered the front and rear wheel separately it is time to get both wheels off the ground at the same time. At a jogging speed, bend your knees, push the bike down into the ground and then burst upwards, pulling up simultaneously on the pedals and the handle bars. Once you feel comfortable jumping white lines, you can try some bigger obstacles such as soda cans or sticks.

Advanced Bunny Hopping — Once you can easily jump your bike over curbs and pot holes, give these advanced skills a try. Ride up to a soda can so your back wheel is even with the can. Bunny hop just the rear wheel and while it is in the air, swing it to the side, knocking the can over. Next, try a sideways bunny hop. Ride parallel to a white line or an obstacle. Do a bunny hop and once you are off the ground, move the entire bike sideways and over the line or object. Do both these drills to the right and then to the left.

Turning

There are three ways to take a corner on a bike: Lean the bike, lean your body and the bike, and turn the handlebars. Most steering is done by leaning, but learning how to turn the bike using the handlebars can be a useful skill. By turning the handlebars instead of leaning the bike, you prevent the possibility of having the tires slide out from underneath you on a wet road or on a gravelly turn.

Parking Space Crit — In this exercise, you are going to have your own little criterium inside a single parking space. Attempt to make a full circle inside the confines of a parking space. Remember to look to the place where you want to go instead of where you currently are (this is important in all turns). Once you’ve mastered turning in one direction, try it the other way.

K Turns — This drill is more of a confidence builder than an actual skill you might use on the road. At a slow speed, ride parallel to a wall. With the wall on your left, turn directly into the wall so your front wheel hits it at a 90 degree angle. Allow the wheel to bounce back off the wall a few inches. Turn the wheel to the right and continue riding parallel to the wall. Do this several times along the length of the wall.

The Big Finish

I like to finish all my skills clinics with a little competition that incorporates a lot of the skills we just worked on.

The Slow Race — Have all the riders line up as if at the start of a race. Mark a finish line about 20 meters away. Using balance and steering, each rider will attempt to ride as slowly as possible without falling over. The last rider to cross the line is the winner. If they clip out, ride backwards or crash, they are out of the race.

I tried to cover some basic skills in this article, but if you have other drills you’d like to add, send them to me at josh@liquidfitness.com. Perhaps one day I will put together a comprehensive list of every cycling skills drill known to man!

Breaking Away

I had a good workout, a good ride to work this morning, taking a short detour to Back Bay before heading towards the office.  As I got off the bike trail and onto Main street towards the office, a [construction dirt hauling] truck pulled along side of me.  The driver then moved left to give me space to ride through the construction zone. I speeded up in front of him while he trailed patiently.  As I rode through the intersect on Main and MacArthur, the trucker turned right and shouted through his window: "22 miles an hour!"

I smiled, waved and gave him a thumb-up, a grin spread across my face as I remembered the scene from Breaking Away when the main character sprint behind an 18-wheeler.