Cycling Fitness Myths

An article o f Bike Radar magazine stated that most of the fitness myths that concern road bikes and also has something to do with improving fitness. However, scientist claimed that these myths aren’t true, and they have scientific evidence to back it up.

Most of these myths are often things of which we are all aware or have at least heard of before. For instance, some people believe that riders of road bikes should shave their legs in order to help them go faster – and many do. However, there is none of a single study that supports this belief.

Another fitness myth is that those riders who perspire a lot are not fit enough to compete in bike competition. Dr Nick Gant of Loughborough University claimed that this is not true; he said: “after repeated training your body becomes more efficient at cooling, so you start to sweat earlier and produce a greater volume of sweat.” This means that the sweatier riders of road bikes could be the best – although they may not look it at first sight!

Riding road bikes is going to take a lot out of an athlete, which include water that may lead to dehydration. However, the myth that cycling without eating will lead to your body drawing on the unwanted fat that can be found around your pot-belly, and thus reducing the size of it as it is also apparently unfounded. This is quite simple to understand. If road bikes are used for exercise before breakfast, the road biker will at some point during the day intake calories equivalent to that lost when exercising without food.

Another myth is that when riding road bikes pumping up the tyres to be very hard will make the bike go faster (presumably by reducing the friction between road and tyre). Apparently, through an experiment conducted by Dr Timothy Ryschon at the University of Texas, it was proven that there was very little difference between tyres that are pumped to the correct or normal pressure and those that were over inflated to make them very hard, which renders the benefits of this advice as negligible.