12
I've asked this implicitly of two qualified personal trainers. (One of the two usually trains Olympic athletes, so I trust his judgement.) Each time I said that I was interested in weight training to balance out the extra workout that my quads get (not just in the lower body, but to bring up my upper body strength too). Both of them said it was a reasonable ...
10
Fat loss will come from eating less calories you consume, and the easiest way to create a deficit is through your diet. The biking is a great supplementary activity, but it will be extremely difficult to add mileage or begin additional jogging without consuming more calories to make up for those activities. Adjusting your diet while maintaining your current ...
10
Short answer, there is a health risk from increased intake of polluted air, but the health benefits outweigh the risk. Funnily enough, you are exposed to a higher concentration of pollutants driving, but for a shorter amount of time and at a lower respiratory rate.
Overall, air pollution exposures experienced by car drivers were modestly higher than those ...
8
Generally, given the mechanical efficiency compared to human efficiency, you can multiply your watts x 4 and get your calories burned. It's going to vary some, as some people are more efficient than others, but that is a good way to get pretty close. It's based on both human and mechanical efficiency of the bike being around 20-25%.
The math:
200 watts at ...
8
Sitting becomes a problem when it translates into a pattern of (sedentary) behavior that often results in a lack of regular exercise. More to the point, most of the studies define sitting as a prolonged behavior with little to no movement (eg. Watching tv, working at a desk, etc.). And, to confuse things more, a relatively new study suggests that sitting ...
7
I really doubt that you have a palm muscle problem at all. The palm of the human hand has very little muscle (basically just a muscle for the thumb and for the little finger[1]), with no muscles in the middle of the palm. Most of the muscles for your fingers are actually in your forearm.
More likely things:
You compressed the medial nerve in the carpal ...
7
What does it mean to bonk or hit the wall during a run or a bike ride?
In endurance sports such as cycling and running, "hitting the wall" or the "bonk" is a condition of sudden fatigue and loss of energy which is caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles.
Can this can be a fairly serious thing, so what are the ...
7
In short, you can't target fatloss.
You can however make some healthy changes to your life, most of which you've already done by the looks of it. Most people have a hard time losing fat on their abdominal area. The only thing you can do is keep living healthy, tracking caloric intake, making sure you get enough rest and working out regularly.
Things like ...
7
There's a lot of quality peer reviewed data out there showing links between aerobic exercise and your heart, but a good summary (with cited studies) is this article from Johns Hopkins:
[Exercise] improves the muscles’ ability to pull oxygen out of the
blood, reducing the need for the heart to pump more blood to the
muscles.
Distance cyclists and long ...
6
If you eat enough food to offset the energy you spend cycling, you won't lose weight.
One basic approach might be to estimate the number of calories you're spending (there are several online calorie estimate tools for cycling out there on the internet), and make sure to eat that much additional food per day. Track your weight, and adjust the amount of ...
6
Be careful drinking caffine after exercise, particularly if it's a coffee to go. Think about this. You have just exercised and your heart rate is already high, then you have caffine which elevates your heart rate even higher. I know this wasn't your question, but I wouldn't recommend coffee or any drink with caffine as a post recover drink.
Milk based ...
6
A few misconceptions here.
You will never ever get that "gym body", so don't worry about it
It sounds harsh, but it's true for a few different reasons.
It's hard to achieve in the first place. You need to put a LOT of time and effort, and even money into it, in order to get the "gym body".
A lot of people try, and don't succeed, even WITH the time and ...
5
By gaining weight, I think you meant gaining lean muscle mass! And if this is your main concern, then here are a few rules you need to follow:
Lift weights - especially heavy weights by focusing on the major muscle groups like chest, thigh, butt, back and core. Try squats, deadlifts, benches, chin-ups, bent-over rows and lat pull-down machine next time ...
5
Congratulations on getting started. Now that you have recognized the benefits of exercise - having more energy and feeling better, you should have motivation to continue.
You have chosen a progressive program that combines walking and running, gradually increasing the degree of difficulty. You have some good links in the comment section to information and ...
5
Swimming fitness is a little different because your arms are the predominant power source and your breathing is controlled instead of natural. If you are having trouble with a length, however, the dominant issue is likely to be efficiency. Form drag, friction, rotational drag, etc. will nearly stop you outright if you are not balanced and smooth. According ...
5
As it stands, you may be fit enough, but you are not trained enough, unless you plan on walking pretty much the entire run portion of the event.
Most marathon plans (Which is a distance shorter than the 30 miles) will have you running 50-70 miles a week, with quite a few runs in the 10-15 mile range.
However, I think the biggest limiter right now is your ...
5
First of all we have to look at what you need in terms of real conditional capacities.
Lactate thresholds have been used to asses one's endurance capacities related to many sports such as cycling, running or swimming.
What you are asking is basically if you can improve the delay in onset of lactate accumulation that is correlated ( not cause ) with the ...
5
TLDR: Yes, cycling is better for your knees (and more than that)
Cycling is significantly better for not only your knees but also your ankles and your entire spine. The fact that you push a pedal won't hurt your knee, the sudden impacts while running is what will hurt the join. These sudden impacts are also the reason why it's worse for your spine and ...
5
The timing of the cool-down phase of exercise does not affect recovery, because there is no benefit to performing a cool-down after exercise.
Based on Do We Need a Cool-Down After Exercise? A Narrative Review of the Psychophysiological Effects and the Effects on Performance, Injuries and the Long-Term Adaptive Response, this systematic review found that the ...
4
First, there are very few muscles that actually run through the palms. Most of it is either tendons or ligaments, and the tendons are attached to muscles that are in the forearm, not the hand.
Second, what you are describing is a very commonly known (among cyclists, anyway) effect of pressure on the palms which compresses the nerves and blood vessels, ...
4
We only bought our mountain bikes yesterday, we rode 8 miles and was fine this morning "BUT" may have pushed myself too far today by doing 20 miles and ive got a horrible feeling that my legs will refuse to get back on it tomorrow lol. My backside, my legs, my arms and my shoulders are aching like mad. So I defo think 20 miles is too far...
4
http://www.livestrong.com/article/396039-how-to-calculate-cycling-power/
This is actually one of the better estimations, although any of them are basically educated guesses. Without a properly calibrated power meter, it's hard to get a completely accurate reading of watts.
4
How much time do you have to train, and how many days/week are you able to train?
You sound like a relative beginner, so you can expect pretty rapid improvements from just riding more. Frequency beats duration at this point. Try to get out as often as possible, and ride as long as you have time for.
When you feel yourself stagnating (which will probably ...
4
Make sure your protein intake is high enough or you could be losing muscle. 2 eggs is only about 12g of protein. Maintenance levels of protein for a very physically active person are at least 1g of protein per lb of body weight (~2g per kg). Take this with a grain of salt, as it is subjective -- depending on your current physique, you may wish to lose ...
4
Everyone has to start somewhere. You will very quickly find out how far you can go.
Do not try and keep up with the class, but do work on keeping your legs moving as long as you can. I.e. Do the best you can, considering the circumstances. You will get better with practice, and have patience.
One of the things the instructor will do is suggest tension ...
4
Here is my 2 cents
First off, I think you are probably working out plenty. Biking 40 km per day is a great workout and should burn plenty of calories. In addition, you work out other times, so the AMOUNT you are working out is no problem at all.
A good breakfast is extremely important in my opinion for feeling good throughout the day and also to even help ...
4
The problem is that the toe nail is too long and the toe box of the shoe is too small. This means that the nail is constantly banged into the wall of the shoe. This physical trauma eventually causes the nailbed to lose adhesion with the nail and the nail will fall off.
Fix:
Make sure that your shoes fit and that the toe box is roomy enough for your toes ...
4
To some extent it depends what you mean by "fitness". To ride your circuit faster for example, you could try some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). You can make up HIIT session for yourself on the bike. THis kind of training can, apparently, help to improve your VO2max.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training
A HIIT ...
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