Let’s begin with with the question. What is cycling confidence? Cycling confidence means that you are able to ADAPT to a situation, and BELIEVE in yourself when it matters most. Your cycling confidence allows you to exercise your personal freedom to eliminate anxiety, self-doubt, and indecision during a criterium, road race or time trial.

Second, where does cycling confidence come from? Simply put, cycling confidence comes from how you choose to PERCEIVE yourself as a bicycle racer.

Let’s breakdown the definition to the ABCs of Cycling Confidence. A is for Adaptability. B is for Believe in Yourself. And C is for Competitiveness.

A: Adaptability: Cycling confidence comes from your ability to adapt. Why is this important? Imagine for a minute, you narrowly escaped a crash with four laps to go in a criterium. What are you feeling in the final laps to the finish of the race? It is likely that your perceived pressure to perform, and to stay upright will be greater as your near the final turns to the finish. The key is to adapt, and to race aggressively (and, safely) to the best of your ability regardless of outside expectations or obstacles.

B: Believe in Yourself: Cycling confidence comes from your ability to have faith, and to believe in yourself. This unquestioned faith provides the inspiration to follow through on your short and long-term goals in bicycle racing.

C: Competitiveness: Cycling confidence comes from the ability to tap into competitiveness. Competitiveness is the drive within. One of my colleagues in sport psychology, Dr. Ani Chroni tells us, “competitiveness provides the energy, strength, intensity, and persistence to improve and work hard.” Competitiveness is the fire inside of you–it is the spark of creativity.

So, go ahead light the fire inside of you, and unleash your fears, and climb to cycling success.

Sport Psychology Consultant, Wenzel Coaching

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kathryn_C._Wilder,_Ph.D.

Here are questions to ponder: How are you creating your breath and how are you breathing as you are cycling? How you answer that question is beginning to analyze your development of endurance within cycling. For how you create your breath is about the torso, it’s the physical side of endurance, performance, and how you are breathing during cycling. It’s about your pattern of breathing during different parts of your cycling. Do not think there is a right way or a wrong way to breathe for that idea limits your thinking on the subject of breath development within cycling for endurance. There is only an effective way or ineffective way to breathe using the core to enhance endurance while you’re cycling. Core and breathing development is the foundation for endurance and performance development.

If you cycle for fun, and want to increase enjoyment, ability, and performance in cycling, you need to learn to incorporate the development of your breathing abilities with core breathing as your foundation. Your actual physical force coming from the core area of the torso is in direct relationship to stage of your breathing. Core and breath are interlocked with the function of creating force from the core into your cycling. As your exhalation reaches its peak, you’re at the weakest point of force creation within your core.

To experience the feeling of force change as you exhale, try this exercise. Feel your core in action and change as your breath changes. Inhale by pushing out your belly button and leaving your upper chest at rest. Do not take your breath with your chest by pushing it out. In this program the chest expands after the core, for the core forces the chest to expand. With the belly button out from the inhale, pause. Feel tension in the muscles around the core from pushing it out. Then tighten the muscles around the belly button and push down towards the feet. As you push slowly (and do it very slowly so your mind can direct the action), feel the tension in the core going down to your feet and at the same time relax your shoulder muscles in direct response to core feeling. The shoulders will naturally relax with tension in the core and if the mind directs the shoulders to do so.

Then lift something with little weight slowly and feel how much effort it takes to do it. Effort is the key word to focus on. Put the weight down slowly so your mind can feel it clearly, and relax your shoulders. Exhale half way by pulling in the belly button, then pause and tighten the core muscles and push the core down your legs towards the feet and at the same time relax your shoulders slowly. Then lift the light weight again and feel the difference in effort. Put down the weight again and exhale all the way by pulling in the core and then pause and tighten. Then lift again and feel how much effort it takes and how it feels different between having full breath and no breath within your core. A weightlifter will never pick up heavy weight on an inhale or with low breath for they feel they are at their weakest in those two stages of breathing.

Experiencing the differences gives the mind the ability to choose to change and use the core/breathing within cycling or any other sport.

This is a small example of how breath and core work to form force. You can feel your own strength change with your level of exhalation and inhalation when you are working with something that has weight.

How you view the function of the core area of the torso and how it influences breath usage affects how you value your core/breathing development within your exercise programs. Looking for the most effective core development and breathing enhancement will affect your overall ability within your sport and enjoyment. Look at the function of core/breathing to adjust to the demands within the physical activity during competition itself. Breathing is the foundation for endurance and performance. It is the triggering of the core to be forceful physically.

Concepts within this program are core are breathing together. If you want a strong usage of core within your sport, breathing is the triggering of the core. Do not think of core without breath and breath without core, for they work together for performance.

Each physical sport will use core/breathing to fit within the sport to create endurance and strength. Weightlifters will use core and breathing to affect their ability to lift. Swimmers will use the ability to breathe in a very different way to lengthen endurance. Finding the most effective way to engage core/breathing to create your breath for endurance is the challenge to increase performance.

The order for core/breathing to develop endurance begins with two parts; one is movement within the torso to form inhalation and exhalation beginning and ending with the core. The second part is how the mind directs energy and strength into sets of muscles for cycling. As your breath changes so will performance. Being focused on breath first will bring into focus your physical and mental abilities related to cycling.

What lessens performance is fatigue. There are two types. One is in your body and the muscles. The other is fatigue of breath which has progressive affects within performance of muscles. Fatigue within breathing ability begins with a pattern of breathing that becomes shorter. Mouth breathing becomes the main way to breathe, which creates less range of movement within the whole torso. This turns into lower endurance and then turns into loss of strength. Your mind is watching and feeling the change. Fatigue of muscles has a direct relationship to breathing, for with shortness of breath and breathing with your mouth, muscles become tight in the legs and shoulders; this tightens the whole torso. Think of breathing abilities as the foundation that supports physical and mental performance abilities in cycling. This brings into clarity what to work on for performance, between breath, body and mind for they are linked together.

Performance is based on an old idea. Your physical performance is based on your weakest link; finding the weakest link within your mind, body and spirit is the challenge to improve ones performance. One of the weakest links in performance development is spirit, for it is the least understood and developed in exercises. There needs to be focus on the meaning of spirit, which is founded on breath, and the directional abilities of the mind within your physical movement. Creating your spirit within your exercising program lets you develop your spirit force, but they are different in refinement and bringing them together create choices within cycling for endurance ability.

Bringing up your performance takes a degree of understanding that brings into focus the directional abilities of the mind within the movement of the physical muscles and your core/breathing that forms your spirit force within cycling. The development of spirit (breath) force within cycling is not simple, yet people do it naturally in order to have any level of performance. Refining the natural process of developing your spirit within your cycling takes lot of internal feeling of muscles in action and mental methods that affect endurance.

Qi Gong is an ancient system to develop core/breathing to have endurance and mental directive force in movement. Qi Gong is a method of bringing spirit as the foundation to support mind and body. This method has been refined over centuries into many forms that affect energy and strength within a conscious directive mind. Taking core/breathing from a general training to a refined training to enhance performance within cycling takes thought and physical feeling to engage the core. Breathing in a mental directive way is rewarding.

Cycling takes a lot of physical endurance and your breath usage affects your ability to keep up. How many hours a week do you work on your breath development and controlling it to enhance your cycling? Is core/breathing development part of your program and if not, why not? When you get tried as you are cycling, is it muscles, which can be fixed with exercises? Or is being tired from not being able to inhale and exhale easily? Training the physical body in an organizing manner is the main focus for most performance programs, but they do not focus on development of breath integrated within the exercises that enhances breath range ability. This is important for developing endurance of ones abilities physically.

Refining training to focus on core/breathing as the foundation to physical muscle force would be ideal, but most people think physical first and breath is a distant second. Having core and breathing as the central foundational focus within each exercise changes the whole body reaction to the exercise. Core and breathing affects the use of the shoulder muscles by not letting them become tight. Disengaging the use of the shoulders and connecting to core force during your exercises is a key part of enhancing performance in cycling or any sport.

To enhance your trained performance there is a general toning of muscles that enhances the mind/body connection feeling and feedback connected to the strength that rests in the core. Physically there is a central area of strength. It is the core and tapping into that source within training forms possibilities for physical force of action.

Each sport has its own set of muscle developments that fit into body movements of the sport. Being clear on what groups of muscles that are needed to be developed in conjunction with development of the core and breathing will not waste time and enhance the enjoyment of performance.

Using Qi Gong training for developing performance is about the relationship to core within the breath as the central area of strength and force of movement. Then, to train the mind to project energy and strength within your physical movement has to be developed over time and learning from your effort. Understanding Qi Gong can be confusing, for there are many forms and each form affects the body/mind relationship in different ways. Finding the most effective form for yourself is a challenge, but you never waste time learning Qi Gong from a good instructor. It is about the long term effects when you learn Qi Gong.

Qi Gong is developed from Eastern ideas of energy flow and strength within each breath in movement. A Western way of looking at Qi Gong is learning to be in the zone, which affects physical performance. The core is activated with inhalation for strength. The release of energy within the core and body is within exhalation as you express your physical force in physical movement. In cycling, finding and developing an effective form of Qi Gong that trains you to use muscles to control short inhales and long exhales will affect endurance. The longer your exhale, the better your overall performance can be in your sport. Learning to inhale fast and exhale long takes training time independent of other training for it should be its own program to be developed.

Qi Gong teaches that the core is the source of strength and energy that are linked in different amounts. Because it is a source only, core energy has to be directed to have any real effect on performance. You can have a strong core, but if you do not direct the energy effectively, you will waste much of the force that rests in that area. Learning to direct the core/breathing force is an art of mind and body.

Performance is about the internal force of energy and strength flowing through the body for external expression within the movement of the body like in cycling. It takes a lot effort to be a cyclist; learning how to develop your best abilities is an art of expression, for it is force of action that makes it enjoyable to be a cyclist.

Finding and learning core/breathing techniques within different Qi Gong schools will always help in life for one main reason; you should not hold stress in the shoulders. The more a person uses core and breathing, the less stress can be held in shoulders which affect abilities of the body to move and overall strength.

http://www.bartleyenergycoach.com Qi Gong instructor for Core/breathing as the source of ones physcial force within physical action.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Bartley

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First is the fluid.  This may be the simplest part to decide on for most of us.  Water is of course the usual fluid of choice for many, however, there are now many fluids that could substitute for water depending on the needs of the rider.  Sports drinks are growing in popularity and can be a good addition to a two bottle ride.  Sports fluids generally contain some (and we do mean some) electrolytes and a fair amount (and we do mean fair amount) of sugar.  None of this is bad.  In fact energy and electrolyte replacement is paramount on long rides.  The problem with these is that some of us simply can’t stomach the sometimes syrupy sweetness of these drinks when we are exercising.  Also, be careful when you select a sports drink and read the label.  Some of the newer drinks contain stimulants such as caffeine, which can lead to dehydration and alter your heart rate.  Others have additives that don’t help you out at all as an athlete, but sound cool on the label.  Our advice is to be picky and select drinks that contain only the things you are trying to replenish.  Water is of course the base for any re-hydration program and is safe.  If you use water, then you can add supplements only as you need them and not when you don’t.

Second are electrolytes.  The most common electrolyte deficiencies during exercise are potassium, calcium, sodium, and magnesium.  Sodium and potassium usually are the first to go down although calcium is not far behind and often these are the source of muscle fatigue and cramping.  The trick is to figure out which of these you burn through the most.  If you are a sweater, then you are likely going to need sodium,  if you are thin and have a low BMI (body mass index) then you may need potassium.  Many of us have had to experiment with different electrolytes during long rides to figure out which is really missing and even then it is something of a guess.  Blood work can help, but who has time to get tested before and after several rides.  Fortunately our bodies will simply excrete excess electrolytes and overdosing is very difficult (but not impossible) to do.  There are now many ways to replenish electrolytes while riding including some beverages such as Gatorade.  Also there are capsules that contain various dosages of individual electrolytes as well as combinations of them.  Basically, there is a pill for every possible replacement need.  Again be picky and seek out advice from the people listed above.

Third is energy.  Again there are as many theories on how to replace burnt energy as there are riders, but one thing is known; if you are going to ride for more than an hour, then you need to start feeding yourself.  Carbohydrates are the foundation for energy replacement because it is the easiest type of food for your body to convert to energy.  This said, there is also a role for proteins, fats, and fiber on those really long ride days.  There are now a whole host of bars, gels, goops, mixes, and fruit preparations to make eating on the ride simpler.  These are great but cost money.  many of us over the years have simply figured out our favorites and now have a routine when packing for a ride.  When thinking this over consider the length of the ride and how long it will take.  A good rule of thumb is to try to take in 250-500 calories per hour, more as the ride time goes up past 3 hours.

We have seen some really creative water bottles in our time on the road.  In fact, some people basically have a hungry man meal in each bottle.  For those of us who can’t stomach that kind of sludge, multiple components have to come into play.  Isn’t this why we have those little pockets on the our jerseys anyway?