Yoga for Endurance Athletes: Getting and Staying Aero on the Bike - Bakasana

The following guest post is by Fred Williams, an experienced triathlete and yoga instructor residing in Austin, TX.  This is just one post of many and you can find out more about Fred at his website. Enjoy!

Recently, I was asked by one of my students if there was anything they could do to help them get ready for staying in aero position on the bike for long races like 70.3 and the Ironman distance. I smiled and told him, "Yes."

I don't think he knew what he was asking for when he asked if we could spend a couple of classes working on being comfortable for long periods of time in aero position. Last month I wrote about a pose called Malasana, or Garland Pose, which is essentially a deep squat. At any rate, we were using Malasana in order to both open the hips and experience a greater connection to our feet which can be useful in running for moving with greater ease (especially after a hard bike leg) and generating more power resulting from greater range of motion.

Like many yoga poses Malasana can be a preparation for or a segue into other more challenging but very useful poses. And as it turns out it can also be a great beginning to an exploration of getting and staying aero on the bike. So what we are going to do over the next few posts is move from Malasana into a few more poses that can be added in sequence to promote the necessary bodily transformations that can make long bike legs less difficult from a positioning standpoint which in turn, ultimately, can lead to more efficient runs.

The next pose we explore in our sequence of aerodynamic building yoga poses is a pose called Bakasana or Crow Pose. The reason this pose is so important in our quest for aerodynamics is that it can promote the necessary core integration we need to support our torso out on the aerobars. Although in yoga Bakasana is an arm balance and when you first see it you might think it is a pose for strengthening the arms. Nothing could be further from the truth. By and large arm balances in yoga are core cultivators. And for our purpose of getting aero and being comfortable on the bike, Bakasana can train us to properly engage our core to provide the "lift" we need to comfortably maintain a flat back.

To come into Bakasana, we start in Malasana - a deep squat with our heels together. Place your palms on the floor out in front of you about a foot and a half away from your feet. You want your knees up even with your triceps. Shift your body forward bringing your weight fully onto your hands. Bending your elbows keep shifting more and more of your weight into your hands while keeping head up and your gaze on the floor in front of you. With your body centered over the palms, try bringing one foot off the ground. Engaging your core by bringing your navel in and up toward the spine as though you are lifting and filling the area near the kidneys with air. It is this internal movement that provides the lift in the hips and keeps the knees high up on the triceps. Technically for our purposes, you could stop at this point and work the pose by alternating between lifting your right and left feet off the ground and bringing them up toward your hips. Trust me 3 to 5 reps with each foot is a workout.

If you are comfortable with balancing on your hands and have no problem with the pose while one foot is on the ground, then try taking both feet off the ground at the same time. Again, be sure to keep your head up with your gaze out in front of you and in between your hands. If you have open hips and can get the sense of lift through your core you may find you are able to get quite a bit of height in the pose. If so try holding the pose for about 6 to 8 unhurried breaths before bringing our feet back to the ground.

If for some reason the arm balance doesn't work for you, say balance is an issue, or you have weak wrists, you can still reap the benefits of the pose by taking the balance aspect out of it and practicing Bakasana on your back. In fact almost all yoga arm balances can be practiced while on your back allowing you to strengthen the core as you work your way up toward practicing the actual arm balance.

Coming into Bakasana on your back is very similar to practicing it upright. Start with your heels together and your knees apart. Your back will be flat against the ground. First you will rotate your pelvis up toward the ceiling which will cause your knees to rotate toward your shoulders. Now, as if you were doing crunches, bring your shoulders off the floor and move the torso up toward your knees. Hook your elbows on the insides of your knees and draw your navel down and in toward your spine. This will assist in deepening the fold. Hold the position for anywhere from 4 to 8 breaths, then relax. Repeat the movement 3 to 5 times. Working Bakasana regularly, aside from being a neat trick you can show your Tri-minded friends, will give you the core awareness and integrity that we will need for the next pose in our aero building sequence. There aren't to many issues with practicing Bakasana other than wrist issues and fear of falling so if you have any reservations, try the version where you explore the pose on your back for a while. I actually find that version more difficult. Until next time, train well....

Crudavore. Have You Heard?

Somebody twittered me the term "Crudavore" today.  Interesting word.  A lengthy description can be found here, but the term generally describes somebody that doesn't eat processed foods.  It's essentially the same thing as a "raw foodist".

I definitely fall in this camp.  I grew up being told by my parents that processed foods were crap, but I wasn't aware that there is a sliding scale as far as what's processed.

You might think that only "junk food" like Fritos is processed.  True, but paleo diet fans believe that even bread is processed food.  You can't find bread growing on a bush and it only comes after the ingredients are processed by man with crushing, grinding, soaking, mixing, baking, and more, making it one of the first processed foods on Earth.  

The end result is bread, which does have lots of calories and helped man get to where he is today, but is also a chief source of wonky nutrition that is giving us excess calories and loads of health problems.  

Some people are having a lot of success with their nutrition by going back to more primal diets which are a better fit for our digestive systems.  Raw foods have the most nutritional potential before they are "processed" away, but the trick is switching over your taste buds to enjoy them.  You also have to change your shopping and cooking habits  (or lack thereof).  

I am enjoying the challenge.  On one hand, it is different, which is fun.  On the other, it's surprising how the mind clings to one pattern, then adopts it, then decides that the new is better than the old when the old was previously judged as the best way just a short while ago.

The most amusing part is that eating like a crudavore feels like a lost art.  It wasn't that long ago that we all ate that way most of the time, but ask a modern American to do it and they wouldn't be able to assemble an entire meal of raw foods before heading to Stop N Go for a mini-pizza.  Just like swimming and running is rarely done by us out of necessity nowdays, eating "old school" style might be a behavior that makes us feel more alive, healthy, and purposeful on this planet.

"Eating slowly fills you up faster" finally proven

This article was recently published proving what your mom always said: "Eat more slowly and you'll fill up."  The scientists gave the subjects either 5 minutes or much longer to eat a serving of ice cream.  The ones that didn't have to gulp it down in 5 minutes had measurably higher hormones that signal the brain that you are full.  They also had more full scores on some other tests.

An interesting thing to observe is if you actually have an empty mouth before you take your next bite.  Many of us still have half a bite left in there while we are cramming in a whole new one, myself included.

In the quest for a better power to weight ratio for triathlon, it seems there's an unending array of ways we can eat and treat ourselves better.  Most interesting is that they are almost all common sense; you just have to apply yourself and break bad habits.

Just like you can go overboard with overeating, you can also get too thin and that compromises your performance as well.  For example, Chrissie Wellington has commented that she makes sure she doesn't go below a certain weight because a lack of body fat will sink you in the swim.  This couldn't be more true. The "owner's manual" for greyhound dogs says to never let them swim in deep water because they will sink like a stone.  They don't have enough body fat to keep afloat!

Spirulina is some wicked sh*t

Maybe it's because it has more protein than meat. Maybe because it has more "veggie" than veggies. Maybe because it turns your poop green (not saying I know that).

I noticed spirulina on the ingredients label of nearly every superfood concoction around. I googled it and figured out this is some great stuff, then wondered why you never hear about it.

Well, I ordered some of it in bulk powder and quickly found out why it's not so popular. First, it doesn't taste great. It's not bad, kinda like how mullets aren't bad (just not good), but you wonder if maybe there's a dead shrimp somewhere in the container.

Second, the powder is super fine, like chalk dust, and gets everywhere. Turning over the tablespoon to dump some in a smoothie is like creating your own green Arizona sand storm.

Lastly, your lips and teeth will be bright green until you rinse your mouth out. If you're still in fourth grade or work in IT, it's a great way to show off to or freak out friends.

The upside is that it has so much nutrition, there's a warning label on the side saying taking too much will kill you. That's the kind of razor's edge I like to ride!

Spirulina - Pond scum that may be just too awesome for mankind.

A Double 6-er. Ouch!

I completed a mega-workout-weekend on a totally vegetarian diet and it was amazing.  Two days of 6-hour workouts, back-to-back, and that's after doing a 5,000 meter swim and 6 mile run the day before (Friday).

I had to stop halfway through Saturday and pile on lots more calories than normal.  There's day-to-day caloric intake and then there's caloric intake for crazy workout mode.  I get grumpy and sleepy when I'm not taking in enough.  I ate a pile of starchy salty goodies and took a short nap, then felt amazing and was back out the door.

Having stacked 6 hour days, I'm now in complete awe of how people like John Hirsch and Chrissie Wellington can do so ad nausem.  The strategy is to stay in Zone 2 as much as possible, not overexerting, but you certainly feel it by the end of day two.

I thought for sure that I'd have plenty of time to do other stuff, but the time it takes to support a 6 hour workout day is far more than you'd think.  There's the food, fixing flats, changing clothes, wretching...  

On the leanness front, eating super healthy foods instead of bad ones continues to pay off.  There's not much more fat to lose around here.  I need to dig up a picture of me quite a few years ago where I look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy on roller blades and compare that to one I took this weekend.  I weighed around 48 more lbs. then.  

If you asked me to strap on a 40+ lb. weight belt and do this weekend's workouts, I'd have said no thanks.  I'd have done it anyway, but I'd still be cursing no thanks as I went thudding down the street.

Eating healthy and not overeating is a habit that takes time.  You see a little bit of payoff and that motivates you.  You also begin to find and crave decent replacements for bad food splurges.  Eventually, those become the norm and you lose the interest in the bad stuff.  It's a great day worth celebrating when you actually prefer a salad over a milk shake.