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So next on my list of "things I should have picked up twenty years ago, and now are vaguely embarrassing to learn" is bicycling. I found myself in possession of a 21 speed Pacific mountain bike, and I've been riding it a few miles as a warmup before climbing workouts on the moon board. The things is...I suck at bicycling. Like, badly. I can ride a bike, but even just keeping my balance while signaling a turn is a conscious effort, and I regularly get concerned I'm going to just fall over, which is deeply stupid. I feel like I should be more fluent in my motion, but I'm just not.
I learned to ride a bike at an appropriate age, but never really did it much after a few 15-20 mile bike trips in scouts in my early teens. My parents never really let me ride my bike anywhere interesting because I would have to cross "busy roads" and I was the kind of quiet submissive kid that listened to them and didn't push boundaries.
So here I am, 33 years old, and I'm bad at riding a bike. But it seems like something I "should" be able to do, and the novelty is making it a pretty fun workout.
How does one get better at riding a bike as an adult? What should I be doing to bike as a workout program? What should my goals be? I literally have no idea, so far I just ride a mile up the road and turn around and ride back, then climb.
A minor thing that may help (no guarantees) is learning how to bike without your hands on the handlebars (at least temporarily). Essentially this is going at a sufficient medium speed, and “shifting” your body weight or center of balance a little more towards your hips. It also forces you to make your pedal cycle more consistent and regular. You bike straight and one handed, then slowly practice shifting your weight back slightly, so that at first you are lightly resting the hand on top of the handlebars, or floating one or the other on top, and then practice removing it for longer periods of time (of course you can grab it back with one or ideally both hands carefully if you wobble). Eventually you can get to a point where you can, on flat and straight roads without traffic, bike straight with your hands on your hips or so. Note that this works best on a more mountain bike style bike, some road bikes have seats and/or handlebars that deliberately force you to assume more of an aerodynamically superior forward lean position. You also can’t really do this on any kind of notable incline.
I’m not completely positive if that would help or anything, but maybe? The process of learning it for me at least was helpful for getting a better and more intuitive sense of where my balance is and could be, though I already had spent a decent time biking so idk.
Also yes, perhaps adjust your seat too.
Thanks for the tip!
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I don't know how you could do it but I think the best way to find your limits is to exceed them, so if you're concerned you're going to fall over you should make a point of falling over. One point in your favour is that bikes become more stable as the speed goes up, so balance-to-failure can be practiced by going as slowly as possible. Also you're a BJJ guy so you're probably used to getting thrown on the floor.
You could try finding somewhere semi-soft like some grass [1] and then riding very tight circles and figure-of-8s as slowly as possible, then slower than possible. Stall. Fall off. Then try it a bit faster. Keep speeding up, turning tight and falling off until self preservation kicks in when the falls get uncomfortable enough that you chicken out of falling off and correct the turn. Then repeat the exercise one handed. You'll look like a clown doing it but you'll quickly map out the lower end of the performance envelope, and you can practice your judo/BJJ falling technique at the same time (the only time my childhood judo classes have paid dividends is when I fall off my bike).
[1] Narrow bike tyres are bad for grass so try and choose somewhere more like a cow pasture or a rugby pitch, not someone's lawn(!).
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Find a bike shop or rental and borrow a ladies sit-up bike for a couple of hours, see what you think. Yes, they’re theoretically meant for girls, but they’re a lot more comfortable and more stable, and you can go from riding to standing safely in a fraction of a second just by lowering your feet. Plus you get a basket to put your stuff in :)
The idea that bicycling should involve spending hours in a weird tantric sex position mystifies me.
I'm not really that interested in buying anything. I suppose I'll need to get a helmet eventually, but outside of that this is more of a work with what I have situation.
Though I had an unrelated conversation with my sister recently about "boys" vs "girls" bikes, where I said I never saw the classic female bike design as peculiarly feminine, and outside of a bike that was pink or ribboned, I wouldn't really see a guy on a girls bike and think "fag."
If anything I could easily imagine one of those Traditional™️ masculinity™️ bloggers informing me that it was effeminate for a man to spread his legs to "mount" and "straddle" a men's bicycle.
Fair enough, though I think renting one for a day would benefit you by giving you a better idea of what difficulties are coming from you vs your bike.
I’ll admit that putting a long, hard object between my thighs to get pounded repeatedly isn’t my idea of a fun time ;)
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I rode my bike a lot. It became my primary mode of transportation over COVID. I rode it to the store, for exercise, anywhere that was less than 3-5 miles away by roads that didn't completely freak me out. And I had a couple mile route that I did pretty much every day I didn't have an errand to run. I still wouldn't say I am comfortable in terms of riding in traffic or on unfamiliar roads (identifying and dodging road debris or potholes at speed makes me nervous) but I am comfortable with signaling and stopping and starting. I don't feel like I am constantly at risk of randomly falling off my bike. OTOH there is no way I would ride on a mountain bike trail or even do a more than 10 mile ride on a nicely paved surface, so you may be looking for different advice.
I have no idea what advice I'm looking for, so I appreciate you.
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The thing I see done "wrong" the most is starting/stopping in combination with saddle height being too low. Everyone who hits they gym knows hitting a squat ATG makes it way harder to produce force compared to 1/4 squatting. But for some reason people do not translate this to raising their saddle to where they can produce the most torque. I'm pretty sure it's because they want it low enough to put a foot down when they stop. The canonical site about this topic is here.
Honestly some of it may not be your fault but the bikes. It's Not About the Bike, but I'm 80% sure what you have is a bike shaped object from Walmart. I actually think there's a place for that kind of thing, especially for kids bikes, but unfortunately "good" bikes are unreasonably expensive in the US. At least the Euros can get decent city bikes or entry level sports bikes from decathlon for non-absurd prices. Like seriously bikes easily start getting into motorcycle territory pricing in the US.
Riding on the road on the US is frustrating for everyone, as a recent thread here talked about. I do quite like mountain biking still though. Trail systems are color coded like ski slopes. Hit full send on trail where you just about but don't lose it. Upgrade colors as you improve. For fitness basics of any cardio apply, watch out for over use injuries and assume you will have to put in more hours than if you were to train aerobic capacity via other modality.
Thank you for the contribution. I probably do need to set the saddle higher.
I'm pretty sure it was a cheap bike, and I came into it second hand, but how bad can it really be? I figure it will, you know, roll and stuff, and I don't plan to enter any races any time soon.
What do you mean by putting in more hours compared to other modalities?
Sorry for the late reply, offline for the long weekend.
Cheap bike is fine for rolling around the neighborhood. Like I said l, I do think there is a pace for them. The short version is good metallurgy is expensive. The sub $500 "mountain" bikes from Walmart come with a warning not to ride them on unpaved surfaces. Making a mountain bike where it's light enough to be rideable but tough enough where you don't taco a wheel is surprisingly difficult. On the road you'll feel every Watt a cheap bikes cheap bearings rob from you, but for "city" rather than "road" riding it matters less.
Because cycling is only semi-weight bearing and has no or little exentric you generate less strain per unit power/cardio zone. Stimulus to fatigue is still good, but raw stimulus is lower. So for arobic fitness you might need to put in 50% more time than running for the same cardio benefit. For example, for the same VO2 max increase from x hours of preceved zone 2 work. If you have a good bike fit it will still be easier on the knees though.
Yeah, we'll see. I don't think it's exactly to my taste anyway, someone just gave it to me, so I guess if I find I enjoy the activity I'll start looking around for something better. Like a lot of people, I really try to avoid spending any money on hobbies until I'm pretty sure I'm committed. I wore secondhand climbing shoes through 5.10a, and I'm steadfastly holding out on buying rashguards for BJJ. I don't want to buy a bike and have it sit in my garage taking up space.
That makes sense. I guess I never thought about because the novelty of the stimulus balanced it out for me whenever I cycle, and I when I see cyclists they are extremely fit, so I never thought about it being "easier" relatively speaking on a per minute basis.
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