A Mountain Biking Yoga Routine – Yoga for Mountain Bikers

11 Feb A Mountain Biking Yoga Routine – Yoga for Mountain Bikers

By Staffer Lena Wilson

In this post you’ll find a MTB yoga routine that can assist with your repetitive peddling motion adventures, whether riding here in Copper Harbor, Michigan or elsewhere. The selected poses are intended to be accessible for all flexibility levels and possibly to help you gain more flexibility over time.

We’re not actually expecting anyone to get into the splits here. But with consistent practice, you’d be surprised what you can do. Or maybe you already can!

Practice Consideration:

• do this routine before and/or after your bike ride (we’d be impressed to see someone try yoga on a bike!)
• practice in the order presented here as a MTB yoga routine
• choose a few from each category
• do just one category at a time
• start with what is accessible to you and build up – don’t worry about getting everything at first

Some of these moves may seem simple, but the key here is slow movement with awareness. Move slowly, yearn for good posture, try to feel every part of the body. Even when you think you’ve got it, start from the beginning again and see how you are moving, how slow, how complete. In the links provided, don’t worry about looking just like the pictures- you do you and simply aim towards the pose.

Mountain Biking & Yoga: Yoga for Bike Riders

1. Hands, Wrists, Elbows, Shoulders

The hands and arms can get so beat up in Mountain Biking! Gripping the handlebars, getting rattled by all the rocks, punching a tree… The best thing is probably to get a friend to massage your hands. But if you don’t have that…

• Hand Clenching
• Wrist Movement Up and Down
• Wrist Rotation
• Elbow Bending
• Skandha Chakra
• Seated Side Stretch – sit cross legged with arms to sides, inhale arm up, exhale to a side – do both sides and do what feels good to you!

2. Oh the Repetitive Joint Rotation: Hips, Knees

• Ardha Titaliasana
• Shroni Chakra
• Knee Bending
• Knee Rotation
• Bound Angle (can do reclined/laying down too – here’s an alternative approach – do just stage 1)

3. Tired Thighs and Calves (and Hips)

• Callanetics Thigh Stretch – sit in vajrasana, put your hands behind you with fingers facing forward, lift the pelvis
• Moving Low Lunge – breath in when you come forward, breath out as you move back and onto your heel
• Pigeon – if you really want to get into it, here’s a video. Otherwise just start with Thread the Needle
• Wide Legged Seated Fold – if you’re hamstrings are tight bring your legs closer together and don’t worry about getting the belly to the floor!
• Janu Sirsasana
• Seated forward fold – if you’re hamstrings are tight… bend your knees!

4. Extra Poses

• Firelog – some people can do this naturally, for the rest of us it’s a practice

This is a good place to do any extra poses you may feel like doing ~excluding inversions.

5. Lay Down on your Back

• Leg Lock
• Leg Cradle/Supine Pigeon (alternative time to practice if you’re very tight and pigeon is not good for you earlier in the sequence)
• Bridge Pose – you can leave your hands at your sides rather than interlace for starters, the interlacing and moving shoulders under give extra opening~~
• Reclined Spinal Twist

This is a good spot to do an inversion if that is part of your practice.

6. To Finish…

• Shavasana

Here is a great blog post on back pain from mountain biking from enduro!

Last Notes: If you have serious injuries or have had a serious accident, please take extra caution. As they always say, consult your physician or health practitioner. Lastly, different systems/lineages of yoga use different names for the poses and here the author as used what is familiar to them.

This is a sibling post to A Kayaking Routine post. There are some similarity in poses and language.