Cycling vs. other aerobic activies



tourchamp2015

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May 18, 2005
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The other day my friend, who is a personal trainer, was telling me that cycling only work the legs, as compared to whole-body aerobic activities such as swimming. He told me that people should only do aerobics that work the whole body(running included, but less effective than swimming). What do you guys think?
 
I regularly watch Oz-style aerobics on TV, it does get my pulse going, but never as much as a good bike ride! :)

Joking aside, I think ANY exercise is good, and cycling at a fair to moderate pace for a prolonged period of time (anything longer than 20 mins that raises your HR and gets you breathing heavier) is an effective cardio-vascular work out.
There is a certain amount of upper body work out in downhill/MTB/singletrack riding, less on road riding, but all cycling works the heart, lungs, legs, gluts and to a certain degree abs. (just think of all the muscles that ache if you have a break from riding and then get back on and try and push to the level you normally would)

Running doesn't work many more muscle groups than cycling (apart from flapping your arms about) but has a far higher impact on your joints, due to the percussive rhythm of feet on tarmac. You get a lot more runners giving up because of knee problems than cyclists.

Government advice is to do at least three 20min sessions of exercise per week, how many of you do more than that in a single ride? Then multiply that by how many rides you do per week...

I don't cycle for fitness, I cycle for pleasure (fitness is merely an unwanted side effect):)
 
tourchamp2015 said:
The other day my friend, who is a personal trainer, was telling me that cycling only work the legs, as compared to whole-body aerobic activities such as swimming. He told me that people should only do aerobics that work the whole body(running included, but less effective than swimming). What do you guys think?

When they come up with carbon fiber trunks, and titanium goggles, we'll talk about swimming. That's the trouble with other sports - you don't have this cool bike that you can work on and fix up.
 
The attached picture (from Adams et al. The biomechanics of back pain) pretty much sums up why running is a bad idea. Those are sagittal cross sections of lumbar intervertebral discs ranging from healthy (top) to late stage degeneration (bottom). If you're over the age of about 16, you're already on the second one. That's more than enough to make me stick to low impact activities. When it comes to aerobic activity, your heart doesn't know or care what other muscles are involved.
 
Now that artmichalek has ruined my appetite...
The main difference between running and cycling is the upper body movement. When we ride our body from the waist up to the shoulders, doesn't get that much of a workout. When you run, or use an eliptical machine(the favorite of my knees) your trunk twist and that movement helps to get rid of the spare tire that a lot of you have (not me, of course;) ).
I have no scientific data to back this up, it just seems to be common sense to me. So I'm probably wrong, I usually am. My ex-wife told me so.
 
Chance3290 said:
When you run, or use an eliptical machine(the favorite of my knees) your trunk twist and that movement helps to get rid of the spare tire that a lot of you have (not me, of course;) ).
I'm not sure if its the lack of upper body movement that causes my spare tyre, or the fact that most of my rides seem to incorporate at least one pub, usually two or three. (Which means admitting I'm a "pleasure" cyclist).
 
i tend to avoid these one size fits all recommendations like this trainer offered. while it is good to know about some fitness generalizations, we are all different in a lot of ways.
as for running, what kind of upper body musculature results are evident on a marthon runner typically? yet look at some road cylists, including sprinters, track and crit riders.

perhaps he is familiar with peripheral heart activity (PHA) that was popular at a time for circuit training. fallen out of favor for the most part...

the legs place the greatest demand on the organism. so riding the bike can only be good. one fact i was told is until you get to an advanced cycling level any cross training is good. swimming and crosscountry skiing, weight training, aerobics, skating, all good and preferrable to running or tennis with respect to chances of inducing injury. cycling is non impact, so it has great longetivity. crashing aside.

once you get to a certain level, either real or imagined, doing anything but riding eating or sleeping is....(nods off)

tourchamp2015 said:
The other day my friend, who is a personal trainer, was telling me that cycling only work the legs, as compared to whole-body aerobic activities such as swimming. He told me that people should only do aerobics that work the whole body(running included, but less effective than swimming). What do you guys think?
 
Batesy said:
I'm not sure if its the lack of upper body movement that causes my spare tyre, or the fact that most of my rides seem to incorporate at least one pub, usually two or three. (Which means admitting I'm a "pleasure" cyclist).
I hope you're not suggesting that there could be a connection between me drinking fermented wheat juice and my ever-growing belly. I only drink beer for its inherently healthy properties.
 
artmichalek said:
The attached picture (from Adams et al. The biomechanics of back pain) pretty much sums up why running is a bad idea. Those are sagittal cross sections of lumbar intervertebral discs ranging from healthy (top) to late stage degeneration (bottom). If you're over the age of about 16, you're already on the second one. That's more than enough to make me stick to low impact activities. When it comes to aerobic activity, your heart doesn't know or care what other muscles are involved.
Nice pics!

If I had known then what I know now I would have never done any running or jogging. My back is toast and it hurts doing simple activites such as grocery shopping. Cycling or other non-impact exercise is the way to go.
 
Doctor M - Hear! Hear! I've had 2 surgeries to fix up blown out discs and deal with the repercussions from time to time. The causes for the blow-outs were abuse of my body by lifting lots of heavy stuff and twisting with it when I worked in a liquor store when I was a strapping High School and college kid. Also racquetball and of course running. Now I just hike/walk briskly and pedal my butt off. I think the human body evolved to include running in its skill set, but let's face it - our brains are our differentiating feature compared to creatures such as cheetahs, cougars, lions, etc. Some people may have the genetic disposition to run without wearing out as fast as the rest of us mere mortals, but one must be prudent with how one uses what our bodies can deliver. That sounds sensible. I'm off for a glass of wine so as to not neglect my body's needs and requirements.
 
Long Rider said:
. I think the human body evolved to include running in its skill set, but let's face it - our brains are our differentiating feature compared to creatures such as cheetahs, cougars, lions, etc.
The problem is that we haven't evolved to run on pavement yet. :(
 
Yes! Pavement is to blame - dang. The next question is: how many eons of time will it take before we develop the shock absorbing spines, knees, ankles, etc. through evolution that'll allow us to sprint through the concrete jungles of modern humanity injury-free? Ain't going to happen any time soon, if ever. Pity.

Say, everytime I see pictures of Kenyan runners in their home country, they are not pounding pavement - are they on to something here?
 
Long Rider said:
Yes! Pavement is to blame - dang. The next question is: how many eons of time will it take before we develop the shock absorbing spines, knees, ankles, etc. through evolution that'll allow us to sprint through the concrete jungles of modern humanity injury-free? Ain't going to happen any time soon, if ever. Pity.

Say, everytime I see pictures of Kenyan runners in their home country, they are not pounding pavement - are they on to something here?
I doubt that evolutionary step will happen, since there's no longer much of a survival element to running. We'll just have to keep getting better at repairing the damage.
 
Long Rider said:
Repair or replace - check this out:

www.charitedisc.com/

If they perfect this new disc thing I may run and racquetball again some day.
That's a big if. In addition to involving a massively invasive surgery, the companies making these things still haven't addressed things like vertebral body resorbtion or wear particle migration. Not to mention what happens if it breaks loose. They've also been presenting some pretty suspect data on effectiveness.
 
artmichalek said:
I doubt that evolutionary step will happen, since there's no longer much of a survival element to running. We'll just have to keep getting better at repairing the damage.
We're pretty much done with evolution in a classical Darwinian sense. The next wave of evolution will happen in a laboratory and will be brought about by genticists. It's not going to happen today or tomorrow, but civilization in the future is unlikely to share our values and mores on genetic engineering. They will look back at us through history and find our current societal beliefs antiquated just as we look back and find slavery to be outdated and undesirable.

The future will look more like Aldous Huxley than Charles Dickens.
 
tourchamp2015 said:
cycling only work the legs
Heh...tell him to try steep, technical downhill MTBing with crappy brakes. THAT is a workout for the forearms.
 
Doctor Morbius said:
The future will look more like Aldous Huxley than Charles Dickens.
That's why I try to open the Doors of Perception with my Beer Key. Only lookin' to the future....
 
tourchamp2015 said:
The other day my friend, who is a personal trainer, was telling me that cycling only work the legs, as compared to whole-body aerobic activities such as swimming. He told me that people should only do aerobics that work the whole body(running included, but less effective than swimming). What do you guys think?
i think your friends needs to go back to school. Whatever exercise your doing aerobic, anaerobic, weightlifting. you never just use one muscle group, no matter you are doing.
 

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