Bottom line up front: Drop your heel at the bottom of the pedal stroke to engage the glutes. With the opposing leg, use the hip flexors to raise the opposing pedal Keep the pedals spinning at a consistent 80 to 88 RPM on the bike. Use the shifters to navigate the resistance of the terrain. Doing this will allow you to travel faster with less effort and more efficiency during the ride. It will also allow you to pedal longer without the that burning sensation in your quads and thighs. How to Engage Glutes on the bike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQunj1AuGAA – Drop the center of your back. https://youtu.be/IZoru7CJUYw?si=A-K2g-yU9A-2vMRF – Long and Pointless until 7:28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fDUqcTj8A – Squeeze Glutes and drive the big toe down https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIXiUdgUZ38 - Drive toe upward and drop back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDEtrc9rkqg – The only exercise for glutes It has been a long three year journey. A journey that has enabled a the completion of not one but two 100 miles bike rides, cresting many summits, fighting off countless habits and walking away from old habits. The journey has had late nights, early mornings, painful days with aches and pains that have resulted in the freedom to go anywhere and see literally anyone. Within reason has gone from just around the block to three or four counties over and back. No longer is the number of hills needed to complete the ride an area of concern, but the question of will I have enough supplies and time to be home before nightfall. It has been a long three year journey, and it is yet to be complete. During this time, I have learned that the two most important things about being on the bike are the consistency and the effort. Leaving the amount of time on the bike to the side for the moment, what ever effort placed on the bike in practice will reflect when on the road or in your event. It’s a safe saying that sport science and coaches will parrot. Like most cyclist, the leg pain is expected. Our legs hurt because we are putting time and effort in to the pedals. That effort is converted in to motion that drives the cranks, pulls the chain and ultimately spins the rear wheel propelling us forward. The more time, we do this (the more consistent we are) the less effort we acknowledge. We are getting stronger. The rides grow in length, the mountains that use to take the air from our lungs become slight kickers and rises. The world of pain that we use to fear entering, has become a matter of enjoying the weather and/or reaching a destination. The stress and pain on the legs remains. This stress is present due to the fact that we use only one muscle group to push the pedals. That one group, gets worked repetitively as this is what we know. It is what we have always known. This group gets the bike moving, it gets the power out, it is used when we surge and it is used when we take off from a complete stop. The quadriceps muscles, located in the front of the thigh, between the pelvis and the knee, has been our go to muscle group for moving the bike. It is this muscle that we feel when we pedal. When it gets over worked, we have that familiar burning sensation that tells us it is time to slow down, or get off the bike entirely. This was my experience. After putting in a miles upon miles on the bike, I would come home barely able to walk. Stairs felt like a chore and the same muscle group would burn to the point of exhaustion as I tired to sleep and relax. The idea that this was what the professional cyclist did rang in my head. After all they do double, sometimes, triple century rides competitively all the time. They have the engine for it, as the announcers would say. They have trained for years to spin the pedals with grit and determination that they can compete for hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is the level miles and miles above where I am. Then I notice how young these athletes were. Ages ranging from their early 20’s to their mid to late 40’s. Surely they must have had some formal training before being able to pedal such distances. Then I looked at their feet. I noticed that for the long flat rides, when the peleton was ‘playing games’ with one another, many of the riders feet were locked at a 90 degree angle to the pedal. Some would extend the pedal stroke by pointing their toes downward but this was only for a moment or during a sprint. This was different from my pedal stroke where many times the toes were pointed downward. A quick search on Google showed that this was because these elite athletes were using their glutes and hip flexors to push and pull the pedals, allowing them to generate their speeds. Where I was using my Quads for the entire effort, they were using a small muscle groups in conjunction with their quads to compete. It is an odd notion. How can one use these formally untapped muscles to move the pedals on the bike? Youtube showed after video showed how to engage the glutes in a search. It is a matter of locking the foot at a ninety degree angle, dropping the small of the back and squeezing the glutes to feel the muscle engaging. That’s great I thought, but this does not show me out to use this on the bike. One video showed how to direct the glutes using a broom stick. Another showed how to lay on the floor and feel the glutes. Another showed how to sit on the bike and locate the glutes. What they all had in common was that the foot has to be at a ninety degree angle and that the small of the back needed to be dropped in order to ‘engage’ the glutes. Between this and using the hip flexors to pull up on the pedals (Something that will be covered later) one should be able to generate a faster pedal stroke than with only the quads. I tried it. That evening, after work, I got on the bike and rode toward one of my local loops for hill repeats. At the bottom of the hill, instead of attempting to hold a harder gear (ultimately stretching the chain) to reach the top, I shifted to an easier gear and spun the pedals, making sure to drop my heel during the pedal stroke. It took some minor adjustments to find the ‘right’ gear that would give me the manageable resistance. At first is was uncomfortable. Memories of the first time sitting on the saddle and or the first serious workout on the bike come to mind. After a while it was less about the discomfort and more about the speed at which I was climbing. I went from grinding up the hill at a 9mph, to practically coasting upward at an astonishing 13mph. What’s more, I could feel the glutes being used as I pedaled. I was continuing to use my quads but at a fraction of their former requirement. The bike and I were sailing. We were sailing up hill at that. After the ride, when the bike was put away, I had taken a shower and eaten dinner, I could feel my glutes hold a fraction of that burning sensation that I used to feel in my quads. I was able to walk easier, climb stairs and even do laundry without needing to sit and nurse my tired quads. Yes this is new but it is effective. It is an area that will need to be trained, hence the soreness. These muscles as well as the quads should ‘hopefully’ allow for easier climbing, faster flats and longer overall rides. If you want to experience this the simple thing I can tell you is to drop the small of your back, and drop you heel during the pedal stroke. You will be surprised at the result.