ARM PUMP: WHEN YOU JUST LOSE YOUR GRIP

You can’t really avoid arm pump, or to give it its even scarier-sounding technical name, chronic exertional compartment syndrome. Bikers – both the motor and pedal kind – can be afflicted by chronic exertional compartment syndrome.

Constantly tensed arm muscles caused by a tight grip on the handlebars, and the resultant increased blood flow, add up to a constriction that manifests itself first as pain and then as numbness, weakness or even total inability to grip. If serious enough, it might require surgery to relieve the pressure and correct the condition.

“We don’t really know how to cure it. There are ways that you can train to try to help, in warm-ups and stretching and so on, but when that happens it feels like your hand is sort of losing its feeling. You lose all the power in your hands. This happens in rowing, motocross and rock climbing,” says Stefan.

“It can be from not warming up properly, it can be from your mind – being a bit too tense and squeezing harder than necessary. Or it can be because the track is really, really rough and you can’t really take a break from squeezing your hands. But it’s not really a strength thing; it’s more of an endurance thing. So I do a lot of specific training for upper body.

“In downhill it’s so steep, you’ve got that pressure on your hands and arms all the time. You can’t ever relax.” He says his on-all-fours workout is the closest thing that’s not actually on the bike that can give him that same workout.