13
I suspect uncomfortable butt issues will get you first, before you ride far enough to do anything to your legs. (Intriguingly, I have been told it is actually the little hairs on your butt pulling and tearing as you sit that cause the discomfort. I always figured it was about building muscles there to sit on vs bones/fat).
However, absolute mileage is ...
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 ...
9
Basically, just ride. Don't tear after it, just get used to the bike and being on the saddle for a time. I would suggest that for the first few times, at least until you get used to the bike and how it feels, that you stay close to home and do loops around a park or something similar.
The last thing you want to do is decide "I'm going to go ride 20 miles", ...
9
It depends on your general fitness level, what kind of bike you have and where you are driving.
I stopped mountainbiking about 10 years ago and didn't do any other sports. When I started again 4 months ago a trip of 20km (12.4 miles), road only, took me a good hour and I was pretty exhausted. The first tour of 30km some days later really killed my legs. Now ...
8
Immediately after (like within 30 minutes or sooner) dump a bunch of protein into your system. I like chocolate milk, but anything with protein and carbs and fluid is good. This helps your body recover faster as it starts off will all the raw materials it needs.
If you can handle it, a cold bath (ice cold is optimum, but very hard to take) can help reduce ...
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
Well I'd recommend you to cycle the way you feel most comfortable with. I would recommend you to cycle at an average pace to work and decide daily how you want to cycle back. Maybe you need to relieve some stress or aggression, so just bite your handlebar and go full speed. Maybe you are exhausted already anyway, so just keep it slow.
Cycling 18km daily ...
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
I hope that your knee issues have gotten better. However, there are a few things that can cause knee pains on a bike.
Seat height - Having a seat that is way too high or low can place odd stresses on the knees, and if it is too high, can also cause hip issues because you have to "rock" back and forth on the seat to stay on the pedals. A good bike fit can ...
6
Stocking up a couple of days before hand on complex carbs (pasta etc) is a good idea. Do not eat loads and loads more, but do get extra carbs into the muscles, (storage). Not working hard (exercise wise) for 3-4 days at least before hand will give you the energy and rest needed to do your best.
If you are not sure at this point then in all honesty things ...
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
You can find a lot of great information online - search for "recovery nutrition".
There are two areas that are important:
First, you need to rehydrate, unless you are one of those rare people who actually drinks enough to stay hydrated on the ride.
Second, you need to replace your carbohydrate stores. There is a "golden window" after the end of exercise (...
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
It's fine to use a stationary bike for Tabata-style interval training. Much of Tabata's research was on stationary bikes.
The protocol prescribes 4 minutes total of intense intervals:
The whole session last 14 minutes and comprises of a 5 minute warm up, 4 minutes of intense exercise and a 5 minute cool down. The 4 minutes of intense exercise comprises ...
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 ...
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
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, ...
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