Ankle Grabbing
Ankle Grabbing
This drill involves holding onto your leg while pedaling. What you will find is that flexibility
and the length of your limbs has very little to do with success in this exercise. The real key is the ability to
push the bike away from the side you are leaning to while continuing to ride in a straight line. By pushing the
bike to the side and keeping your center of gravity in the middle, you effectively bring your body lower to the
ground. Start by pedaling the length of the parking lot holding your right calf with your right hand and your
left hand in the drops. This should be fairly easy. Try it on the other side. Then see if you can move your
hand down to your ankle and hold on to it while you pedal. Once you achieve that, you can try to pedal while
holding the heel of your foot. The farther you lean your bike to the side, the lower down you will be able to reach.
Object Retrieval
This is a natural progression from ankle grabbing. Using the same concept as the above drill, practice picking
up water bottles from the ground. Ride slowly up to the bottle and, pushing your bike away from the side you are
leaning to, bring yourself low enough to the ground so that you can retrieve the bottle. You can start by trying
to knock the bottles over using your left hand and then your right. Move on to picking up the bottles and then
putting them down without letting them fall over. From there, you can practice picking up smaller objects such
as soda cans or bottle caps.
