Melbourne Massage – Musclefix Blog

I came across some interesting research published in the San Francisco Chronicle the other week. You would think if you were a super-fit cyclist, covering 100 to a several hundred kilometres per week that you would be a superb specimen of health and fitness.

Is this you? It’s not me, but I hear from people who cycle huge amounts and I would have thought that that they would have all their bases of health covered. It turns out that if cycling is all you really do for exercise then you could be at risk of developing osteoporosis!

But I’m super-fit so what’s the deal?

A very legitimate question to ask. Do you have calves the size of my head and consider a warm up ride to be 120km? Well, the deal is that while cycling is good for your cardiovascular fitness, muscles and for your joints because of the low impacts involved, cycling alone doesn’t provide enough impact to stimulate the bones to increase their density. Cyclists who don’t vary their exercise with impact, load-bearing activities are at at risk!

What’s the solution?

If you are an average recreational cyclist you don’t have much to worry about. It’s likely that you do enough activity of other sorts that you’ll be fine. If you’re a ‘cycling athlete’ or if cycling is the only activity you do then you need to do some cross-training.

According to Dr. Thor Besier, the director of research at Stanford University’s Human Performance Lab, “a casual walk down the street puts more impact on the bones than biking, and cyclists who spend all their time biking would probably benefit from regular walks and hikes – or even better, a short, intense run a couple of times a week.”

What’s the take-home message?

If you’re a hardcore cyclist, chances are you’re not so hardcore after all!

Read the article here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/15/MNFU1DEVG2.DTL&type=health