Getting Low

We got a pretty decent amount of snow last night, so I decided to skip the indoor training ride and yoga at the shop. I did the same type of drills on my trainer at home and did yoga on my own afterward; definitely not quite the same.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I've been working on my position and posture on the bike. I mostly sat upright last night, but at the end, I tried a couple of lower positions. One with my hands on the drops and a bigger bend in my arms, and the other with my hands in the drops. I noticed two things: one is that my core muscles got tired pretty quickly in these positions. Like I said before, I think that these lower positions require some enhanced core strength. Two, it seemed like my thighs were bouncing off my stomach... not too comfortable.

While I was in these lower positions, I let myself bend at the waist a few times (essentially, my old posture), just to feel the difference. Bending at the waist pulled my stomach away from my legs enough that the bouncing went away; maybe that's why most people gravitate to that position?

(Reminder picture from Joe Friel's blog . You can see that the rider on the left still has some space between his leg and stomach.)

I think the bouncing issue could be resolved by some position tweaks. Raising the saddle would eventually fix it, but I don't really want to do that. My current saddle height has worked really well for my knee health. It seems like moving the saddle forward a bit might also help, but I'm not sure what negatives might be associated with that.

On the other hand, for the kind of racing I do, getting low and aero isn't too important unless it's windy. So, maybe I just won't do anything for awhile.