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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.
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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