To perform this exercise, lie face up with knees bent, feet flat on the floor, and arms resting on each side of your body. Keep your knees close together, squeezing the muscles on your inner thighs. Squeeze your glutes and hamstrings to lift your hips off the floor, keeping your core engaged throughout, so that your body forms a straight line from the knees to the shoulders. Lower hips and repeat. You can do two sets with 15 reps each set. If this is easy, try the same exercise with a resistance band placed around your thighs.
The glutes, are a group of three muscles in the posterior that helps the body stay upright and enables one to power through workouts. Simply put, the glutes constitute the muscles in our rear side. When it comes to cycling, powerful strong glutes help stabilize the pelvis and can also help prevent back pain. However, though the glutes are used to sit on the bicycle, cycling doesn’t really help build the muscle. This is why it is important to do exercises that can help build stronger glutes.
BRIDGES
SQUATS
To perform this exercise, stand with your feet slightly wider than your hips. Keep your toes turned out slightly and your hands clasped in front of your chest. While making sure that your knees stay behind your toes and over your ankle, lower your butt and hips back (as if you’re sitting on a chair). Make sure that your weight is on your heels and that you use your glutes to push yourself back up. Return to starting position and repeat. For a harder variation, try using a resistance band placed around your thighs.
STEP UPS
For this exercise you will need a strong surface with enough room for your foot to complete a single-leg step-up (like a stair/ raised platform/step-up bench). To perform this exercise, place your foot on a step or platform, and push the hips back to activate your glutes while pressing your heel into the platform. Step up until you are standing upright, with your hips underneath your shoulders and glutes engaged. Slowly step back to the floor. Keep your knee and hip angle at less than 90 degrees of flexion. Repeat this movement on both sides.
CLAMSHELLS
To perform this exercise, lie on your side with your knees bent (feet pointing behind you) and feet together. Raise the upper leg towards the ceiling, while keeping your knees bent, to activate your gluteus medius muscle. If this is easy, you can use a resistance band around your knees for an added challenge.
Conclusion
To conclude, lack of glute strength could prompt cyclists to get off the saddle to accelerate (especially on climbs), thereby using their quadriceps and hamstrings. While these are strong muscle groups, they are relatively smaller than the glutes and hence, will fatigue easily. Building and strengthening the glutes will improve one’s ability to engage and use these muscles to set up a solid and effective power line through the pedal stroke. For an effective result, it is recommended to focus on glute strengthening twice to thrice a week.
