Okay, let's talk about that leg on the back side. We have been talking so far about what's happening as the foot goes through pedal stroke at the tops and the bottoms, and we already know that most of the force is being applied on this side right here, as the foot is pushing the pedal down to about 3 o'clock position. But what happens on the back side, the recovery side of the pedal stroke is also critical to this. Ryan, would you stop peddling for a while? This leg is now on the recovery side. What you do with the leg on the recovery side is critical for your economy.
If you allow this leg to simply rest on the pedal all the way to this leg now sitting on the top of this pedal, the other leg have to work harder to lift this pedal up on the back side, very wasteful. Another way to waste energy with the -- on the recovery side, is if you try to pull this leg up, if you use this in the hip flexors and these hamstrings to try to pull this leg up is also going to be wasting energy. Again, we don't want to do that. The only time you really want to do that is when you are climbing or when you are sprinting.
All we really want to do with this leg on the recovery side is un-weight the pedal. I want to try to take as much as weight off the pedal as we can, so we just try to pick up the foot off the pedal. You might think of this as being a platform pedal, there is no clips and your foot is simply sitting on top of the platform, and all you are doing on the backside is actually just trying to take your foot off that pedal. Just lift up a little bit, now in reality that's not going to happen. In reality, because of the centrifugal force your foot is going to stay on the pedal, but we can minimize the amount of weight, the amount of force being applied downward on the backside by simply trying to un-weight. So that's another way to improve your economy, by simply working on taking the weight off of this pedal on the backside.
Now also we don't want to see it happen -- let's go by the peddling again Ryan, so we can talk about what is going on with your entire pedal stroke. When you are peddling the bike we would like to have happening is the knees staying in line of the pedals. So if you will look down as you are peddling the bike what you should see is the knee in line with your pedal. If you see the knees are pointed end towards your top tube, we are actually wasting energy at that point. The reason to do that, the reason that has been talked about for decades, especially in European circles, is a need to become more economical by bringing the knees in. it creates some problems, and also the same time it makes you less economical.
You now have angles that you are creating this way from your knees down to the pedal, and that is not a very economical way to pedal the bike. We are much more economical with the knees over the pedals. Also bringing your knees in towards the top tube is likely to put more pressure on the knees, and for some people that could result in knee problems, some injuries and we certainly don't need more injuries to compound our problems. To improve your economy you must workout all the time. It takes consistency, and it takes patience. If you are consistent, if you are patient with yourself, I can guarantee your cycling performance will improve.
But you must remember one thing, we are now working with a system you are probably not used to working with. We are now working with the nervous system. I am sure you are used to working with the aerobic system, and the muscular system, and those systems you know how they respond, you are used to that. But now with a nervous system it takes more time. You must be patient with yourself, you must allow yourself to be able to adapt to what you are doing in training, don't try to rush it, it is going to take something on the order of months, not days, to get yourself to the point you are much more economical. If you do these things, continue to work on your economy year around, I can almost guarantee that you will be a much faster cyclist because of it. Good job Ryan.
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