You would think that a two-time world championship medalist and former sponsored member of the 7-Eleven cycling team would be able to handle some casual bike rides without discomfort.
But despite her impressive athletic résumé, Leslee Schenk Trzcinski was experiencing the same challenges that a lot of less accomplished riders do. Her lower back stiffened up, her shoulders hurt.
Then three years ago, she started doing Iyengar-style yoga.
“When I got on a bike in spring, I felt so good. That was what made me realize, I had become a broken record, complaining about back and shoulder pain,” says the 48-year-old Canandaigua resident who had retired from competitive cycling by 1990. “Now my back feels strong.”
Schenk Trzcinski was so inspired by how yoga changed her post-competitive cycling experience that she has become a certified yoga instructor.
Her specialty?
Yoga for cyclists, of course — as well as recreational and competitive athletes who add swimming and running to their regime. She launched her first series of Yoga for Cyclists & Triathletes classes earlier this month. The weekly 90-minute classes run Wednesday evenings through late October.
“As my body changed I realized I have this story to tell, and got into teaching. I started working with bikers one on one, showing them poses, pre- and post-ride warm-ups,” she says.
With a repetitive sport such as cycling, you overtax some muscles and underutilize others, explains Schenk Trzcinski. The theme that runs throughout her yoga workshops is “long and strong,” stretching and strengthening muscles to optimize performance.
This is the first year that Schenk Trzcinski has taught yoga in Canandaigua. She has also led workshops in Cape Cod; Washington, D.C.; and her hometown of Cincinnati.
“I am finding pockets of interested bike clubs who bring me in to work,” she says.
Why do cyclists need yoga anyway?
“If you watch people ride they are hunched over, they are they are impairing ability to gain full lung capacity,” she says. “My premise is to break bad habits and build awareness of posture.”
It’s common to find Schenk Trzcinski’s mountain and road bikes in the studio, so she can demonstrate how different poses and exercises will benefit riders on the bike. She also brings visual aids and handouts to reinforce her clinical approach.
Yoga is gaining popularity, with 32 million Americans now practicing in one form or another, says Schenk Trzcinski. Five years ago only one out of five sports clubs offered yoga. Now that ratio is nine out of 10.
Her participants so far range in age from 25 to 65. Some are recreational cyclists while others are serious triathletes and competitive racers.
While Schenk Trzcinski grew up in Cincinnati, her family vacationed in Canandaigua every summer. She credits the region’s steep hills with providing her with superb training grounds for cycling.
In high school and college she swam competitively, then moved to Colorado to teach skiing. There she got involved in triathlons, and through that event, became passionate about cycling. Being close to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, she was invited to be on a national development team in 1985, which was the feeder team for the national U.S. women’s cycling team. For the next five years she traveled and raced full time, medaling twice in world champion time trial events and winning other stages and races.
She left racing in 1990 to pursue a career in sports marketing and sports broadcasting. She moved to the Finger Lakes in 1997 (her husband’s family is from upstate New York). In addition to teaching yoga and biking, swimming and skiing for fun, she works full time as director of client services at CoolBrand Marketing in Pittsford.
She and her husband, Mark Trzcinski, have a 10-year-old daughter, Sophia, who swims competitively.