Coach/Ryan – amazing answers, THANK YOU!
Coach said the magic word: overthinking. Gosh, I do that with everything I do, GUILTY!
However, I think it is also extremely important to keep this in mind, especially if doing half and/or full Ironman races (or in general) – you want to learn how to use your muscles efficiently while biking so you can be able to run after biking for so long.
Yes, one-legged pedal drills help so incredibly much, but what is the “right” way of doing it? As mentioned above, you find info on pulling with the top of your foot when going up, then pointing your toes when pushing down/forward, pulling with your ankles when pushing back, then repeat. The idea of this is to insure you use all necessary muscles when biking. Is this similar to what is mentioned above? “…drills that have you thinking about scraping gum off the bottom of your shoes at the top and bottom of the pedal stroke (which will help you feel how much/little you can actually gain by putting energy into those parts of the stroke)”.
I have also read that if you think of a clock, you should only focus on 1-3 and 7-10, meaning, pushing down and pulling up, as most of the effort should be focused on the top of your foot – which sounds like the stomp/lift description mentioned above.
TIP for everyone else: Since the forum is PACKED with useful info, I suggest you copy and paste these on a notebook for future reference. I use KEEP by Google/Gmail.
thanks!
