He suggested that I send you this video. I am not doing any of the upper body stuff.
I start with the leg swings, then do the step throughs and some lunges then I finish with the rear foot elevated quad stretch (Picture at the bottom). This is a static stretch, and I know that most don’t recommend doing static stretches before a workout, but I really feel these in the center of my knee, exactly where it was hurting, so I am doing two sets on each leg only holding for about 20 seconds per.
I hope that this helps you. I went from not being able to finish workouts because of the pain and thinking I was going to have to take some serious time off to pain free by simply doing this before my ride.
I have never been good about warming up or stretching as I should, so I am lucky that I haven’t had more injuries at my age (59 next month).
Be careful, you can over stretch. I’m sure my orthopedist would scream if I tried to do that stretch. I was working on my lower back, and started having severe pain in the kidney area, and with a history of stones, thought I had something working, but a physical therapist said it was over stretching and introducing some new moves I ran into on YouTube. I dialed it down, and it worked. My knees aren’t 100% factory either with some cartilage removed over the years, so have to be careful stretching that they don’t potentially lock on a chunk that was removed. I was also warned that stretching can cause the ligaments to loosen too much over time and would be asking for problems. As we get older, what would repair itself doesn’t any longer and the natural lubricant dries up. (A local racer-type did a genetic treatment that was supposed to ‘regrow’ cartilage and that lubricant, and it didn’t work. What you are born with, aside from a replacement, is all you get )
If I let my quads go, I get issues too. And all those muscles are so interconnected that any of them that get really off-spec can throw the whole system into a bad spot. I/we just need to stretch the right muscles at the right time to the right degree. It’s not as easy as it should be to pull it off well. My quads right now aren’t happy…
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