Pilates for Cyclists: Opening the Hips and Undoing the Hunch

Pilates for cyclists tends to start after a long season, when a rider notices that the position they hold for hours has started following them off the bike. Hips that feel tight standing up from a desk, and shoulders that sit forward even in a chair.

At West Hollywood Pilates we work with riders one to one, in the classical method. Every session is private. This is what that work actually addresses and why it suits a body that spends a lot of time in the drops.

What riding builds, and what it quietly leaves out

Cycling is a superb engine builder. It is also one of the most repetitive things a body can do. A rider turns thousands of near-identical pedal strokes an hour through a narrow arc, seated and folded forward in one held shape.

Notice what is missing from that description. The hip never opens all the way, and the spine rotates and side-bends very little. There is no impact, which is kind to the joints, and no load through the bones in the way walking or lifting provides.

Riding trains what it trains, and leaves the rest for you to pick up somewhere else. The riders who stay comfortable into their sixties are usually the ones who have done that somewhere-else work.

Why Pilates for cyclists targets what the bike skips

The classical repertoire happens to cover almost exactly the gaps a bike leaves. It works the spine in extension and rotation, and it asks the hip to open. The back of the body a seated rider underuses gets trained at a pace that lets you feel where you are.

Joseph Pilates put it plainly in Return to Life Through Contrology in 1945: "If your spine is inflexibly stiff at 30, you are old; if it is completely flexible at 60, you are young." He meant it as a challenge, and a cyclist who has held one position all summer usually knows what he was pointing at.

Hip flexors that shorten, glutes that go quiet

The hip flexors spend every ride in a shortened position, and they get very good at staying there. Meanwhile the glutes, which should be doing a large share of the pedaling work, often end up underused. Riders frequently arrive strong in the quads and oddly weak in the back of the hip.

Aggressive stretching is usually the wrong tool. Pulling hard on a shortened hip flexor tends to make the surrounding area defensive. What helps more is teaching the pelvis to move independently of the low back, then strengthening the back of the hip through its full range.

Pelvic Lift on the reformer is a good example. The spine peels off the carriage one vertebra at a time while the glutes and hamstrings carry the lift. The low back learns it does not have to do the job. Knee Stretches and Elephant teach the same separation standing on the machine, with the legs moving while the torso stays exactly where you put it.

The upper back and the long reach forward

Hours of reaching for the bars asks the thoracic spine to round and the shoulder blades to slide forward and apart. Off the bike that posture tends to stay a while, and it often shows up as a stiff neck long before it shows up as a stiff back.

We work the other direction. The Swan is the first extension exercise in the classical order, and the rule is that you only lift as far as the abdominals stay engaged, so the low back does not take over the movement. The arm series over the small barrel opens the front of the chest while keeping the arm bones settled into their sockets, which is a more useful sensation for a rider than any amount of doorway stretching.

Breath matters here too. Lateral breathing means the ribs widen sideways while the deep abdominals stay drawn in and up. Riders who have spent years breathing hard into a compressed position often find this the strangest and most useful part of the first session.

The planes a bike never asks for

A bicycle asks for movement in essentially one plane. The body has three. Rotation and side bending barely feature in a ride, and capacities you rarely ask for quietly become ones you no longer have.

Short Box on the reformer brings both back. The twist rotates the ribcage over a still pelvis, while the side-to-side work asks the torso to bend laterally without the shoulders collapsing. Side Kick does something similar lying down, with the frame square and stacked and only the leg moving.

This is the part riders tend to underestimate and then feel most in daily life. Reaching behind you in the car, or catching yourself when a foot slips. The bike never rehearses either one.

What a session looks like for a rider

We start by reading the body in front of us, looking at whether the shoulders and pelvis stay square over the spine when you move. With riders the pattern is usually legible within a minute.

From there the hour runs mat and reformer as its spine, then whichever apparatus your body is asking for. Sessions stay private one to one, which matters when the whole point is watching for the one compensation your body has spent a season rehearsing. We cue the bones into position, and you earn the next progression by getting the movement right.

If you are mid-season we keep the work supportive and leave your legs alone before a big weekend. In the off season we build. Riders in Los Angeles tend to ride year round, so in practice we plan around your event calendar and the canyon routes you have been putting in hours on. Our studio sits on North Highland near Melrose, which puts it in reach of most of the city's riding.

The aim is a body that can still ride the way you want to ride in twenty years, which is the same longevity thinking behind our work on functional movement and how we approach Pilates for athletes in general.

Questions cyclists ask

Will Pilates make me slower or add bulk?

Classical Pilates trains control and even development, not size. Joseph Pilates wanted a supple, uniformly developed body. Most riders find the effect is better position holding and a hip that works through more of its range.

How does this differ from what a runner needs?

Runners come in dealing with impact and single-leg stability. Riders come in dealing with a held position and a back of the body that has gone quiet from the hip up. Both benefit from the same method applied differently, which is one more argument for private work. Our post on Pilates for runners covers the other side of it.

When in my season should I start?

Any time works, though the off season lets us build more. If you are deep in a training block we keep sessions supportive and put the heavier work on your rest days.

My back hurts on long rides. Can Pilates help?

Often it can, and it would be wrong to promise more than that. Get persistent pain looked at by your doctor or physical therapist first. Once you are cleared, individualized Pilates is a sensible complement, and the private format means the work is built around your particular back.

If you ride in Los Angeles and your body has started holding the bike position off the bike, a private intro session is a straightforward place to begin. It is an hour, one to one, with time to talk about your riding and your season before anything is asked of you. You can also read more about our private sessions.

No classes and no one else in the room. Just the work, at a pace your body can absorb.