The sport of cycling features many kinds of clothing. Learn how to select the proper gear in this cycling video.
Consider special materials
Shorts fit tight & padded for seat
Choose jersey for weather
Use pockets for gear
Kevin Livingston is a former professional cyclist who successfully rode and completed six Tour de France races as a teammate of Lance Armstrong. Kevin now focuses on Training and Coaching through his company, Pedal Hard Training Services in Austin,TX.
KEVIN LIVINGSTON: Hi, I'm Kevin Livingston here at Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop in Austin, Texas. We're going to talk about dressing for cycling. Here I've got some examples. Really actually let's start. You got to start from the bottom up. Let's start with our shoes. We've got our shoes. Next would be cycling socks. A lot of these new socks are made with special material that helps wick away the sweat. It helps keep your feet cool and dry. Moving on up to shorts. Very important is cycling shorts. Now, they come in a lot of different brands, different variety, different look. You can have a pair of shorts that looks like a casual shorts with cycling shorts inside them. This is a standard bib. We call it bib because it usually come up over or you may just have it as shorts. Key to having cycling shorts is one, the fit. They fit tight on the legs. This helps reduce chafing which would cause lot of pain after riding for a long time and then of course the padded chammy inside of the shorts. This is going to help cushion you for riding, so you can get out and do some longer rides and not having trouble. Moving on to the jersey, you could choose depending on the temp what you prefer. And if it's really hot out, you could ride a sleeveless jersey. Again, it's all special material that helps wick away sweat, helps keep you cool. Great thing about a cycling jersey over just a T-shirt or traditional shirt or cotton shirt is one, it's going to wick away the sweat, keep dry. And then you've got some pockets where you can carry some food, maybe your phone, your car keys, just really whatever you want, some spare tire. Then moving on you've got--now as the temperature goes down, the more clothing you want to be wearing and you can just layer up. You could be wearing this jersey for example and then put this jacket over. This is a light jacket. It would be great for a day when you're not sure of the temperature or let's say you're climbing a mountain and you need something to top. This would easily fit in the back pocket of your jersey for the way up and out. It's going to help keep you warm on the way down. Then the other we talked about would be gloves. You could go short-finger gloves for hotter weather; long-finger gloves for cooler weather. As a general rule of thumb, the pros won't take off their tights or leg warmers or their long sleeves until it's over 70 degrees.
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