What Are The Muscles Used Cycling Standing Up?

Cycling is an excellent form of exercise. It not only helps with your aerobic fitness but trains your muscles too. As you can imagine, cycling targets your legs, glutes, and calves. But what other muscles do you train while cycling? For example, what muscles are used when you cycle standing up?

Cycling while standing up works the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes and uses core- and -upper body strength. Cycling while standing up is beneficial when climbing hills, as the strain is removed off the legs and shared with the other muscles. More muscles work together to complete the climb.

Aside from incorporating more muscles, there are other advantages to cycling while standing up. There are also a couple of things to keep in mind when you are standing up while cycling. In addition, you can train these muscles when you are not cycling to increase your overall performance. We will discuss these topics further.

The Advantages Of Cycling While Standing Up

The first advantage of cycling standing up is that you are distributing the workload throughout your body. Cycling makes a lot of use of your leg muscles and mostly under-uses your upper body. However, when you stand up, this changes.

When you stand up when cycling, your power output will automatically shift from leg-focused to full-body-focused. Your core will be more engaged because you now need to remain balanced while you are in a more upright position.

Your arms will also be engaged, as they also need to keep your upper body steady, and you will be resting more on your arms.

These muscles all work together to power you through the climb and take some of the strain off your legs. That is why we automatically enter a standing position when we climb a steep hill. Standing up while cycling is a great way to give your legs a bit of a break and incorporate other muscles in your cycling training.

Standing up is also a great way to leverage the power of gravity. Not only are you using you legs to power the pedals, the weight of your body is also focused down on the pedal to apply more force. Especially great when you are trying to bump up the watts to get up that hill.

There are various things to think about if you are cycling. First, standing up while cycling will not improve your performance in all cases. It should be a calculated move when you stand up and how you cycle when you do. If it is not done right, it will not be advantageous to your training.

Things To Keep In Mind When Cycling Standing Up

Beginner cyclists tend to stand up whenever climbing a hill. However, Anthony Bouillod, a French sport scientist and Olympic cycling coach, has done some research to determine when and how is the best way to stand up while cycling.

He discovered that if you stand up on a hill that is not steep enough to require additional muscles to work, you will essentially be wasting more energy. This is because your body will need more oxygen to support the extra muscles that are working, and your energy output will not increase.

Therefore, he determined that we should only stand up when cycling if the hill is steep enough to require the use of additional muscles rather than just using the legs.

Furthermore, Bouillod determined that cyclists only stand up for 30-second intervals. They cannot maintain the standing position for long periods of time when climbing a hill. Cycling while standing up will burn more energy. Thus, we shouldn't start standing at the bottom of a climb but should instead wait until the climb becomes steeper and the extra muscles are needed.

Many cyclists start swaying from side to side when they stand up when cycling. This seems to be a natural movement. However, the ****more energy you use swaying from side to side, the less energy is available to power your muscles through the climb.

Instead, you should focus on engaging your core to keep your body more stable. This will enable you to focus all your energy on powering your legs to climb the hill. As a result, your energy output will be more efficient, and your overall performance will improve.

Engaging your core while doing another exercise can be difficult and ineffective. This is why it is essential to train the muscles to work together when not cycling. You can do various exercises at home or in the gym to help train your muscles to work together and improve your cycling technique when standing up.

How To Train Your Muscles For Cycling Standing Up

When training your muscles for cycling standing up, you do NOT want to focus on individually training the muscles. Because these muscles will have to work together when you are cycling, it is best to train them together as well. This will help establish a mind-muscle connection and target your muscles to work better together.

Exercises such as deadlifts are great because they focus on your legs and back. Your core is also needed to stabilize you as you lift the weight, and your triceps and forearms are also getting a workout.

Any exercise where your legs and core work together will be beneficial - an example is lunges. For example, you can do alternating lunges with weight, single-leg dumbbell deadlifts, or curtsey lunges to help target your leg muscles and core simultaneously.

Also target core exercises, such as dead bugs and mountain climbers, target your core, leg muscles, and arms.

It is also a good idea to work on core stabilization. Doing so will increase your power output during the uphill climbs. Exercises on a balancing ball are great for stabilizing your core.

_{Balancing ball for training; Image courtesy of Amazon.com}

These are merely some of the exercises that will help to improve your cycling technique and performance when standing up. However, the list is extensive. It is vital to train these muscles to work together when you are not cycling. This way, they will do a better job of it when you are cycling standing up.

Summary

Cycling standing up not only works your leg muscles but also engages your core and arm muscles. Therefore, cycling standing up can help improve your performance if done right. However, there are things to consider when cycling standing up, and you should not just do it whenever you feel like it.

You should also train your muscles to work together when you are not cycling, so they can perform better when you are cycling standing up. There are many things to consider that can help make your cycling more effective, especially when standing up.