[HN Gopher] The Creepiest Cycling Condition: Shermer's Neck
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The Creepiest Cycling Condition: Shermer's Neck
Author : dsego
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-07-24 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.welovecycling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.welovecycling.com)
| Pakdef wrote:
| Apparently, the side effects can last multiple months but the
| condition could heal in a few weeks in some cases:
| https://felixwong.com/2015/08/my-experience-with-shermers-ne...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Race Across America probably should be outlawed. Like the
| Cannonball Express it's just dangerous ... dangerous to the
| riders.
|
| And I am absolutely fascinated by it.
|
| I had not known about it until I past a woman biking across
| Arizona with a support car following. When I got to the campsite
| (vacation with the family), I googled and determined she was
| participating in a race called "RAAM". I couldn't believe it was
| a non-stop race across the U.S. Sleep, or any kind of rest, is a
| liability.
|
| I guess I had expected the race to be broken up across a dozen
| days or so with checkpoints and times taken and added to declare
| the winner by race's end. But, no, it's just crazy.
|
| And I guess it's the thing that endears me so much to our
| species.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| why should it be outlawed if it only affects negatively the
| people who willingly decide to do it?
|
| While the cannonball express is definitely dangerous to others,
| if someone wants to ruin their neck cycling across the globe,
| be my guest who am I to say no
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| A counterargument could be that engaging in certain reckless
| behaviors will require paying higher insurance or taxes to
| cover the inevitable permanent disabilities. Much like
| smoking premiums.
| DeWilde wrote:
| If its dangerous only to drivers, and the drivers are aware of
| the dangers, why should it be banned?
|
| Some people love spending their time doing stuff that is
| inherently dangerous, even if it means that they might not live
| as long as the rest of us. And why stop them, seems like hell
| to be forced to live a long but unfulfilling life. We all die
| in the end anyway.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Being "aware of" a risk is not enough to make it disappear.
| It might not be enough to even mitigate it. Why would you
| think that?
|
| Also, no, most drivers are obviously not aware of the
| dangers. Anyone on two wheels who wants to survive treats
| every car driver as a dangerous psychopath until proven
| otherwise.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Who are you to moralize/legislate what people should and
| shouldn't be able to do with their own bodies? These people
| aren't harming anyone but themselves. Even if just about
| everyone agrees with you, no one has any reasonable claim to
| ownership over another's person.
| lesstyzing wrote:
| >> These people aren't harming anyone but themselves.
|
| If they're driving on public roads and are sleep deprived
| then they are endangering others.
| carlineng wrote:
| Radiolab did an episode profiling Jure Robic [1], a former
| member of the Slovenian special forces who took up ultra-
| endurance cycling and won RAAM 5 times. It's a mind-boggling
| story. Tragically, Jure was killed by a car while training in
| Slovenia in 2010.
|
| [1]: https://radiolab.org/episodes/91709-limits
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I generally agree with others replying that people should be
| allowed to harm themselves with something like RAAM if they're
| doing so willingly. However I'm not sure if it's ethical to
| _support_ others harming themselves. Rides like RAAM have way
| more support staff than riders.
| amelius wrote:
| So what muscles are responsible for this? Upper traps?
|
| Could bad posture behind a computer cause the same problem?
|
| By the way, Michael Shermer is quite an interesting person:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer
| [deleted]
| cube00 wrote:
| Spare a thought for those on exercise desk bikes _and_ using a
| computer.
| googlryas wrote:
| Too many to list, most of which no normal person has ever heard
| of, but basically all muscles responsible for neck extension.
| They may have names like transversospinalis, semispinalis, and
| multifidus.
|
| Yes it could, but usually people will take a break at the
| computer before it affects them. I'm 38 and have been
| programming for 20+ years without issue, my posture is sort of
| leaning back in the chair, definitely not leaning forward with
| heard forward.
| TrueGeek wrote:
| I did Paris Brest Paris in 2019 (finished in 89 hours) and got
| Sherman's neck for the very end. I saw other riders suffering
| from it, and one woman who had put her hair in a long braid and
| then fastened that somehow to hold up her head.
|
| Luckily, for me, it came at the very end and I was able to
| finish.
|
| Worse was that I compressed my ulnar nerve and had loss of
| feeling and tingling in my left arm for 6 months.
|
| Lots of good memories from that ride.
| cmgbhm wrote:
| Glad that worked out for you. The ulnar nerve issue is no joke.
| I compressed both of mine on my first 4h ride. It took 2mons to
| get back to guitar with special clip picks and more bike fit
| knowledge and strength training than I expected.
|
| Even finding a diagnosis was a struggle.
| pmontra wrote:
| First of all congratulations for completing the Paris Brest
| Paris. I had a much smaller problem with a new bike. I
| compressed the tendon of my left thumb on a 6 hours ride
| (imagine a 89 hours one. ) It got too weak to open a
| clothespin, no chance to shift a MTB derailleur. It took one
| month to fully recover. I permanently solved it by raising the
| handlebar to transfer some load to the back. My question: do
| you know if some long distance riders compromise the setup of
| their bikes to lower the chances of those kind of physical
| problems?
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Adds to the list of reasons why not to cycle which includes
| erectile dysfunction from pinched pudendal nerve, and traffic
| accidents where you die and the car may not even notice.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Most reasons to not cycle are not inherent to the bike. The
| same cannot be said about cars, they are inherently dangerous
| to all road users (and as a society we paper this over to make
| driving feel way safer than it actually is)
| asdff wrote:
| You aren't going to pinch a nerve from riding the bike 30 mins
| to work or the store, especially considering with commuting
| biking you are standing up off the pedals stopped pretty
| frequently.
|
| Traffic accidents sure are bad but you can identify safe
| routes. For example I avoid arterials and opt for those 25mph
| residential roads that run parallel, and those are extremely
| safe. The number of cyclists that have died last year in my
| city of some 4 million people is also about a dozen people, and
| its not clear whether confounding factors were involved (e.g.
| alcohol or drugs or lack of helmet or nonddevensive/lack of
| awareness biking given the not so small homeless population
| that rides bikes in varying states of sobriety in my city).
| andbberger wrote:
| are you the ghost of john forester or what? blaming cycling
| fatalities on a mythical vilified population of homeless
| cyclists who you assume to not be sober instead of the
| traffic engineers who designed your city is both incredibly
| misguided and prejudiced. shame on you.
| carlineng wrote:
| Good thing there is an enormous list of reasons to cycle that
| far outweigh the downsides.
|
| Shermer's Neck is a condition that impacts a very small
| percentage of cyclists, and only those who choose to
| participate in the most extreme of events like Race Across
| America or Paris-Brest-Paris.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| I don't know. I'd much rather walk or run. At least from a
| paleo argument it's a better option.
| cycomanic wrote:
| What is a paleo argument?
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Given a list of options of ways to achieve a goal, prefer
| the one which would have been most natural to a human
| throughout the last 100,000 years except for the last
| 100.
|
| Need to eat 3,000 kcal? Beef and vegetables would be more
| natural than a Big Mac. Need to go somewhere 3 km away?
| Waking or jogging would be more natural than cycling or
| using the car.
| pdxandi wrote:
| There are saddles you can buy to help with pinching. I
| personally use the ISM Adamo.
| TedShiller wrote:
| karamanolev wrote:
| What value does this comment bring?
|
| Aside from being super obvious, it's the easiest thing to do,
| but also brings no value. Is it helpful for software engineers
| to just "stop being in front of the computer" when faced with
| RSI? How are they going to feed their family? Same for pro
| riders or any other professional people who can't "just stop".
| Pushing the limits has value in that sense.
|
| But it can also be an intrinsic goal. These people are out
| there to push themselves beyond any previous limits. It really
| does help you discover things about yourself and your body in
| ways not many other things do. The sense of achievement and the
| memories created are priceless, but also helps you put so many
| other things in perspective with your newly minted experience.
|
| I find it very defeatist and boring to say "just quit" when
| faced with difficulties.
| dwd wrote:
| Michael Shermer who this was named after is quite an interesting
| person and his podcast is worth a listen. He generally talks to
| the same group of public intellectuals you see on Lex Fridman,
| Sam Harris, etc and often asks different questions.
| jbirer wrote:
| I see people who overexert themselves in sports not too
| dissimilar from drug addicts. They are coping with some internal
| issue by forcing their bodies to produce endorphins & adrenaline,
| to the point of giving themselves diseases like this one
| mentioned. They need professional help and take more time to
| recover.
| bmitc wrote:
| Bicyclists seem, to me, to be a very certain and peculiar breed
| of obsessives.
| system2 wrote:
| Sentino wrote:
| Srsly?
|
| How often are they a problem?
|
| Also it's legal and expected
| zdragnar wrote:
| It depends on the local culture. You've gotta be pretty
| dedicated to ride a bike in the metro near me on some
| streets, because the layout isn't very friendly to
| bikers.
|
| Those that do seem to rarely obey traffic laws- the
| number of near-miss incidents alone caused by bicyclists
| who run red lights or weave in and out of lanes, up onto
| sidewalks, then back down into traffic is too damn high,
| to borrow a meme.
|
| The city would be a whole lot better off somewhere in the
| middle- more room for dedicated biking, and more
| enforcement of safe behavior.
|
| It's not just the roads either, unfortunately. There's a
| shared walking and bicycling path that runs around a lake
| in the city. It's fairly popular, but I've never been
| more than twice because I find walking there is
| unpleasant. You can only get nearly clipped by bikers
| flying past, not staying in their lane, just so many
| times.
| egypturnash wrote:
| To be quite honest, it is very useful for cyclists to
| behave this way when they have to constantly fight
| traffic because it makes drivers give them a wider berth.
| You don't know what that bike's about to do, so you _stay
| the fuck away_ instead of blazing by too close.
|
| On the other hand, people who can't bother to get a bell
| for their bike and zoom past pedestrians are dickheads.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Honestly no bike belongs mixing with pedestrians any more
| than any other vehicle bell or no bell. A pedestrian is
| meandering along at 1-3MPH a bike is comparatively racing
| at 10-20.
|
| Even at only 10MPH you are closing on a slow walker by at
| least 13 feet per second. If they notice you 60 feet
| behind they have less than 5 seconds to react. If they
| don't notice you and you don't maneuver you'll hit them.
| If you maneuver and they also try to get out of the way
| you might still hit them.
|
| I've had multiple bikes zip by with very little space
| where a slight step to the side would have let to
| disaster. Honestly anyone caught biking on the sidewalk
| ought to have their equipment impounded and sold.
| Sentino wrote:
| On one side it's expected from a biker to drive straight
| etc. And then it's expected to drive around plenty of
| obstacles on the bike lane.
|
| But yes we should rebuild cities to accommodate bikes
| first and then see if cars still have space.
| _dain_ wrote:
| "car roads"? there is no such thing, aside from motorways,
| on which cyclists are banned by law.
| egypturnash wrote:
| There are definitely roads where bikes are allowed, maybe
| even with a designated lane, that are not safe ones to
| cycle on.
| Moru wrote:
| But in no case is it the bikers fault.
|
| If the road is allowed for bicycles, the cars have to
| take care not to run them over. Most roads are perfectly
| safe for bicycles, it's the cars that isn't safe for
| them. Best is to plan a city so you can bicycle wherever
| you need to, this leads to less cars in the city which is
| good for you that need your car to get home.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You find them in any sport. Weightlifting is another one
| that's easy to see. Go to any gym for a few weeks, you will
| pretty quickly identify a handful of people who seem to live
| there.
| freetime2 wrote:
| Being a low-impact endurance sport means that cycling is
| conducive to really large training volumes relative to other
| sports. I recall reading that pro cyclists will spend 30+
| hours a week on the bike.
|
| Triathletes are even more crazy, though.
| asdff wrote:
| Honestly after a week or two riding a bike you will get to
| that point. You crank out 30 miles in two hours and you
| will go "well that felt like a jog lets do another 30 miles
| right now"
| alar44 wrote:
| Agreed. "Yeah so I was running a marathon and had to piss so
| you just go while you're running, everybody does it."
|
| Cooooolsies...
| _dain_ wrote:
| Philippides probably pissed himself while he was running from
| the battle of Marathon to Athens. then again he also died at
| the end ...
|
| think of it as a libation to his memory.
| angrysaki wrote:
| I'm sure there's some truth to this but I don't think that is
| what is happening in this case. From what I can gather, this is
| about people who trained for a goal, and during the event an
| unexpected "weak link" in the chain gave out so they found a
| mechanical solution.
|
| I'm sure if most of them had gotten this during training, they
| would have taken the time to recover.
| vocram wrote:
| Drug addicts? Why not just addicted?
|
| Differently from sport, there's no such thing as low drug usage
| being healthy.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I'm not really sure there's any meaningful distinction to be
| made? Like sport, billions of people use drugs for their
| health without becoming addicted every day. And like sport,
| the addicts are only a small minority.
| __alexs wrote:
| Define drug?
| hasmolo wrote:
| i think it's more than that. i see two major groups, addicts
| and users.
|
| the addicts _must_ ride every day, the ride is a major mental
| and physical block to them feeling good.
|
| the users ride to burn out anxious energy, it doesn't need to
| be daily, and you focus on sustainable riding so that your
| coping mechanism doesn't stop working.
|
| i've been in both groups, and tend toward the second now a
| days. my uncle is in his 60s and his "ideal" day is wake up a
| 5am, ride till noon, eat one meal, go to bed. his kids
| recognized this and a few have become users while a few are
| addicted to it.
| ip26 wrote:
| We glorify grit and celebrate toughness. My view is
| consequently people now try to tough their way through
| something they are simply not trained for, up to & beyond self-
| destruction. They have come to think grit is the key, when in
| reality it's training + grit.
|
| Ironically, it's easier to ruin your body for an afternoon than
| to train diligently for years, so the problem has persisted.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Absolutely. It's common to be reminded of one's failure to
| the tune of, "you didn't try hard enough." For some people,
| myself included, the response it to break themselves during
| the next attempt.
| chriscjcj wrote:
| A photo in the article (https://reportage.transcontinental.cc/wp-
| content/uploads/201...) showing someone suffering from the
| condition shows that he also suffers from another condition
| common to many cyclists: a brutal case of farmer's tan.
|
| An extreme case here:
| https://server6.intermedia.ge/pictures/original/503/503371.j...
| freetime2 wrote:
| Suffers from? Every cyclist I know wears their nice, crisp tan
| lines with pride!
| vehemenz wrote:
| I've gotten more farmer's tan from a single 100km ride than the
| cyclist in the photo. That second one though... wow!
| vehemenz wrote:
| I've felt neck fatigue around ~250 miles in a day. My solution is
| to regularly look down when it's safe to do so (not drafting).
|
| One idea I have is a Hololens-like setup, with a camera mounted
| to the front of the bike to allow the cyclist to ride in a "head
| down" position for long stretches, preventing neck fatigue and
| increasing aerodynamics.
| asdff wrote:
| Bicyclists should just sit more upright so the neck doesn't
| have to be fatiqued in the first place. If the purpose of the
| ride is for training/health/cardio, then you should want more
| wind resistance rather than less. It means you get to burn the
| same amount of calories in less real time and you can either
| chose to go on and burn more calories or do with that time
| however you like. If you aren't racing you should be avoiding
| all the 1% gain type stuff anyhow because it just makes you
| workout needlessly longer for a huge chunk of change, if the
| workout is what you are going for when riding a bike.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Body aerodynamics is more like the 30% gain territory, body
| geometry is the single most important factor for
| aerodynamics.
|
| I don't think it wise to think you know what is best for
| others. Longer is better cardio and needed for endurance
| training. Less watts wasted in air resistance just means you
| are riding faster. "It never gets easier, you just get
| faster"
| raziel2701 wrote:
| They only said that if your goal in cycling is to get fit
| and health benefits then it makes the most sense to get a
| comfortable bike.
|
| I think it makes sense to fight back against the common
| recommendations you get from bike communities who are
| obsessing about weight and efficiency. If you are seeking
| to get fit by riding a bike, get a heavy bike. You'll do
| more work and you'll get stronger.
| vehemenz wrote:
| There are a few problems with this idea.
|
| A forward position is much faster, both in terms of
| aerodynamics and the muscle groups involved with the pedal
| stroke. It allows even a relatively unfit cyclist to ride
| 20mph quite easily, rather than 13-14mph.
|
| This also means you can go further on a single ride. The
| purpose might be training, but you can't go very far on an
| upright bicycle--after 2 or 3 hours, there is quite a
| difference.
|
| Sitting upright puts more pressure on the sitbones. In a
| forward position, you can distribute the weight among the
| saddle, hands, and pedals. Again, this allows for longer,
| more productive rides.
| beering wrote:
| Would belay glasses work?
| pge wrote:
| Michael Shermer, for whom this condition is named, is also a
| prolific science journalist: long-time columnist for Scientific
| American and author of several books about pseudoscience.
| uwagar wrote:
| perhaps the covid vaccine is triggering it more often now.
| peteradio wrote:
| Sounds like a well contrived urban myth. I can't stop laughing.
| imperialdrive wrote:
| Watch some footage on the cycling that leads to it, and your
| laugh may turn into a gawk.
| fny wrote:
| Is there anyway to prevent such a thing from happening in the
| first place?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I also had some neck issues when I swam a lot. I don't like to
| put my head under water and I don't know the front crawl, though
| I can do the breaststroke very quickly, even keep up with a lot
| of front crawl swimmers. It does take a lot more energy to do
| that but I did it as exercise so that was the point. I don't care
| about any kind of competitiveness in sport. The only reason I'd
| keep up with the crawl swimmers is because they tend to complain
| about sharing the lane otherwise.
|
| But constantly having my neck tilted up to the 'stop' did give me
| an itchy and stiff neck, often lasting the day after the swim.
|
| I hike now for exercise as I moved to a mountainous country, glad
| I don't have that issue anymore.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| "We're all susceptible to what our bodies tell us. When there's a
| strange pain or sickness, our bodies are hinting at us that there
| should be something done about it," the article opens, then goes
| on to uncritically describe people using alarming techniques to
| power through with a grueling activity which has just caused a
| serious injury.
|
| Spending 8 days in near-constant intense aerobic activity on 1
| hour of sleep is likely to cause lifelong health repercussions.
| We should not be glamorizing these people.
| nope96 wrote:
| I ended up with a devastating sudden neck injury that seemed
| computer related. Had noticed when I'd go to turn my neck,
| occasionally it would not actually turn, and I'd hear a 'crunch'
| noise. No pain. One day, it did hurt, and for the next year I
| could not really sit or stand without feeling extreme neck
| fatigue after a few minutes.
|
| 10 years later I have not fully recovered. Doctors couldn't help
| (or see anything wrong on MRI), but said a lifetime of sitting in
| front of a screen 8 to 12 hours a day was probably the culprit.
| Solution was, unfortunately, to quit working. I'm typing this
| sideways laying down on a couch. If your neck starts to act
| funny, give it a rest!
|
| (Building some contraption with PVC pipes as in this article had
| not occurred to me, but it seems like it would just lead to other
| muscles being overused, instead, with new injury somewhere else
| eventually)
| prox wrote:
| Have you as a therapy tried strengthening your core/serratus
| muscles as a therapy?
| nope96 wrote:
| Sort of. I'm not sure what muscles were being targeted, but I
| went to two different physical therapists who both showed me
| the same set of exercises.
|
| I did not see any improvement, (the second time things
| briefly got worse), but I admit I get frustrated quickly, and
| did not stick with it long enough. I was never sure I was
| "doing it right."
|
| Thought about trying again, at home, but I don't know what is
| safe to try. When this started, I'd bought a neck pain book
| (written in the early 2000's) that had example exercises. I
| showed the 1st physical therapist (a PhD), and he said "Oh
| no, don't do those exercises, we don't do those any more.
| That will make things worse!". So I'm leery of trying random
| youtube video exercises... and due to Covid, not quite ready
| yet to go to in-person PT again.
| AQuantized wrote:
| I've had similar issues and started with simply lying down
| and holding my head a few mm off the ground and holding for
| 10 - 30 seconds. You may have to begin with only a few
| seconds if your neck is very weak and build up very slowly.
|
| Beyond that simply doing more exercise helped, I stopped
| focusing on my neck specifically after the initial stage.
| Swimming is great since it reduces load.
| nope96 wrote:
| Yeah, this was actually one of the exercises I was shown,
| but it was explained that a key part was that I did NOT
| use certain muscles while doing it.
|
| I don't remember exactly - but the idea was, if you could
| feel them bulge in the front of your neck as you lifted
| your head, you were doing it wrong - you did NOT want to
| use that muscle group.
|
| (I should have taken notes when doing PT, I wish I could
| remember all this now)
| naasking wrote:
| Strengthening the muscles is definitely the answer, the
| only question is which muscles actually became injured
| and weak. PT is changing pretty fast these days so I
| expect it's hard to find a good one that's up to date.
|
| As general advice, almost everyone these days has some
| variation of upper crossed syndrome given the way they
| use laptops and phones, so upper and mid lats, rotator
| cuff muscles and some neck stabilizers are weak, which
| leads to slouched posture. I can't say this is
| specifically the type of corrections you need, but
| hopefully this useful routine will help otherd avoid such
| problems (I'm not affiliated it's just a good video):
|
| https://youtu.be/i1tjJGGcoYs
| prox wrote:
| Yeah, there is a lot of stuff floating around. I tried 3
| therapists for a similar type of ailment and none really
| worked, the last one was best by just guiding me slowly as
| you do need to "build up" back to a body functionality. For
| me it was walking properly (heel to toe) that slowly got me
| back into normalcy.
|
| Brent brookbush is pretty good institute that helped me
| gain insight with a strong evidence based focus. YouTube
| channels tend to be copycat videos that really don't
| address all the different options and modalities.
| asdff wrote:
| Even with a standing desk you can have issues from doing
| nothing but one thing for too long. I've had a PT recommend I
| take a break to stretch my wrists, walk around, and focus my
| eyes to infinity every 20 minutes or so. I bet almost no one is
| bothering with that; its no wonder so many people have chronic
| pain when they've spent their entire life being generally
| inflexible, sitting for long periods of time in a small handful
| of positions, and hardly ever walking around.
| kodah wrote:
| I had a similar experience getting out of the military. I had a
| known back injury, but nobody could tell why it was manifesting
| the way it was. I eventually ended up at a sleep doctor because
| I refused to be put on opioids but could not sleep. I was put
| on Gabapentin, or rather over-dosed as this use was off-label.
| The physical therapist noticed a change in my range, and that
| my back could suddenly "pop" and release tension. Three years
| later a chiropractor discovered the source of my sciatic nerve
| pain: a fractured disk that had healed over my sciatic nerve
| that caused all the rest of my muscles to tense up. My life is
| mostly normal now that I have some tools to cope with the
| discomfort when it creeps up, allowing me to head off any
| potential pain.
|
| I guess my point in sharing this is that nerve pain can be
| _very_ hard for doctors to diagnose, much less treat, but don
| 't give up.
| willhinsa wrote:
| How did the chiropractor discover that? Did they get imaging
| done?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| All around training is very important if you want to avoid
| injury, particularly if you're going to do things like try to
| ride 1,000 miles in one push. For this condition in particular,
| there are plenty of exercises one could do. These look good.
|
| https://www.iron-neck.com/blogs/news/best-neck-exercises-for...
|
| Most people assume the only goal of training is to improve
| performance in one's particular sport, but in reality, one-sided
| training creates imbalances that can lead to injury, and a
| central goal of any training program should be all-around
| strength and flexibility.
| freetime2 wrote:
| I agree - weight lifting and core exercises have had huge
| benefits for me on longer rides. Whereas previously I would
| start to start to get uncomfortable at the end of 4+ hour rides
| with a sore neck, hands, and lower back - I have found that
| those symptoms have pretty gone away completely after adoption
| a strength training routine. It's made what was already my
| favorite activity even more enjoyable.
|
| I think a lot of cyclists are afraid to put on muscle anywhere
| other than their legs, for fear of gaining weight. But really
| those fears are unfounded, and even a small amount of weight
| training would help with both their speed and enjoyment of the
| sport.
| __alexs wrote:
| If you only train one part of your body (and that's all a
| single exercise like cycling is going to do for you), you're
| setting yourself up for injuries down the road. I've seen it a
| hundred times.
|
| It's like putting a powerful engine in a stock Toyota Tercel.
| What will you accomplish? You'll blow out the drive train, the
| clutch, the transmission, etc., because those factory parts
| aren't designed to handle the power of an engine much more
| powerful than the factory installed engine.
|
| Cycling basically only trains the biceps and to some extent,
| the back muscles. What you really want to do is train your
| entire body, all the major muscle groups (chest, back, abdomen,
| legs, shoulders and arms) at the same time, over the course of
| a workout. And don't forget your cardiovascular work! I'm proud
| of you guys wanting to do this. Three cheers! Falling in love
| with exercise, eating right, etc., is one of the greatest
| things you can do for yourself. And you WILL fall in love with
| it if you can just force yourself to stick with it a year or
| two and experience the amazing progress you'll make.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| > Cycling basically only trains the biceps and to some
| extent, the back muscles.
|
| Not trying to call cycling a full body workout, but it
| definitely does more than just biceps and back. What about
| legs? Heart? Lungs?
| Tade0 wrote:
| I had this once, in circumstances unrelated to sport.
|
| One time I got talked into going to a club - something I don't
| normally do. It so happened that it was "goth night", so I
| figured I would spend the night headbanging.
|
| After a few hours, when the club was almost closing up I noticed
| that something was off - my neck muscles felt weak. Next thing I
| know I'm sitting at the side of the stage with my head down,
| looking like a case of alcohol poisoning, and can't move.
|
| I sat there for half an hour until I regained enough strength to
| at least somehow make to the exit.
|
| Gradually it went away but I only fully recovered the next
| morning.
| Rygian wrote:
| My immediate reaction was that the creepy thing is not the
| condition itself, but the mindset to duct-tape a PVC pipe to
| their heads just so they can keep cycling.
|
| Reminds me of another comment today elsewhere in HN citing the
| classic "the spirit is strong but the flesh is weak."
| Ekaros wrote:
| I find it somewhat horrifying. The clearest indication to stop
| something is for the body to literarily give up... And then to
| jury rig something to go beyond what can be expected.
| freetime2 wrote:
| And it's not even like it happened near the end of the race and
| he decided to power through it, which would be more
| understandable. It happened 1000 miles into the race, with 2000
| miles left to go! I cannot even imagine making the decision to
| continue on at that point.
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