15 Cycling Stretches You Should Do Every Day
Feb
If you’re anything like most of people I talk with, you either don’t stretch at all… or you don’t stretch nearly as often as you know you should.
When I fail to stretch on a regular basis, my muscles feel tight and I occasionally get painful cramps in my legs, feet, arms and even in my neck and back muscles. Maybe you can relate?
Even though I’ve now written a book about stretching and helped thousands of people all around the world learn how to quickly and easily stretch the muscles that are of most importance to bicycle riders, I honestly don’t stretch as frequently as I should. But I’m getting serious about stretching at the moment… and I’m stretching like crazy! I’ve got a little over two months to go before the start of my next big bicycle tour across Europe and Taiwan… and a big part of my training right now is stretching twice a day – once in the morning when I first wake up and once again right before I go to bed.
The thing about stretching is… when you don’t do it, you can feel it. When you don’t stretch, your body doesn’t function the way it should.
But when you stretch on a regular basis, stretching feels good! The more you do it, the easier it becomes and the better you feel.
Stretching is easy too! There’s really no excuse not to stretch. If you learn which stretches to do, and you commit those stretches to memory, stretching should only take a few short minutes of your day. You don’t even have to think about it. It doesn’t need to be a big, long, drawn-out process. You can stretch when you are in the shower, watching TV, riding your bike, or walking down the street. Stretching your muscles CAN and SHOULD be a fast, easy and enjoyable thing to do!
When I wrote “Stretching For Cyclists“, I meant for the book to be a short, simple guide to cycling-specific stretches for people who have never stretched at all… or who had done very little stretching in their lives. But since the publication of the book, I’ve realized that this short text is an excellent resource for someone knows that he or she should be stretching regularly, but doesn’t know which stretches he or she should be doing… and doesn’t want to spend a lot of time on his or her stretching routine.
Some people have expressed to me that they felt “Stretching For Cyclists” was too short and there wasn’t enough stretches in the text. After all, the book only contains 15 simple stretches. But the book is purposely NOT filled with hundreds and hundreds of stretches you could potentially do. Instead, the book focuses only on the information that YOU NEED and cuts out all the other extra fluff.
The way I see it, “Stretching For Cyclists” is a fast and easy guide to cycling-specific stretches. The book contains only 15 short, simple and easy-to-follow stretches…. and these 15 stretches, if done from start to finish, provide a full-body stretching routine, that can be done in as little as five minutes.Once you take the 15 stretches inside “Stretching For Cyclists” and commit them to memory, you can run through your stretching routine in even less time!
I know that stretching is not always easy. Finding the time and energy required to make it happen can be difficult. I even admit that I sometimes go through longer periods of time where I fail to stretch, but I’m getting back into my stretching routine at the moment… and I’m feeling a lot better because of it. My muscles aren’t as tight, I feel better waking up in the morning and at night when I go to bed, and my body feels better as I go about my day.
If you are an infrequent stretcher… or you haven’t stretched in days, weeks, months or years, I CHALLENGE YOU to start stretching once again… and to do so on a regular basis! Stretching is such a simple thing to do; it can be done super quickly; and the benefits of doing it on a regular basis can be life-changing.
