banerjek

One of the many reasons I ride is it makes my back feel a million times better. Despite owning two recumbents which I ride regularly, I've always found my race bike most comfortable -- I like the stretched out position and you can rotate muscles sets in ways that are impossible on a 'bent.

Recently, I was in a non-cycling related accident that among other things broke some ribs. Initially, the docs sidelined me but yesterday they gave me the green light to continue riding. Holy smokes. Despite taking it easy, it's impressively painful. I wouldn't have guessed sitting on your butt and moving your feet in a circle would make your sides feel so bad.

Docs told me this would happen, but it didn't sink in. I'm guessing a lot of people here have already been through this, but it was new for me. Silver lining is I'm now aware of how good this is for the core. One more reason to keep riding, even if I have to tone things down for awhile.

Caliper

I really realized this on the trainer over the winter. I have a Kinetic Rock and Roll model. Without the front wheel spinning, even more balance comes from the rider and there was a noticeable increase in core muscle tone along with the gains in the legs. In addition to balance, your core is helping stabilize your hips against the pedaling forces.

Unfortunately, you'll to take up mountain biking to really work your arms...

on the path

Conversely, strengthening the core muscles will enhance your cycling ability. I inadvertently discovered this after I started regular upper body workouts at the gym.

TimothyH

Climbing out of the saddle can work the oblique's and forearms pretty hard.

Dan333SP

LOL re***bent is censored

deacon mark

I don’t think it does that much for true core strength, that requires more pure muscle work. Spinning or mashing cranks won’t do it.

banerjek

Yah. This has got to be one of the dumbest filters I've ever seen:

ac***ulate. capsi***, cir***ference, cir***navigate, cir***stantial, cir***vent, cu***ber, ,***bersome, ***ulative, do***ent, en***ber, s***, tal*** -- I could come up with literally hundreds of totally normal words this zeros out.

Sadly, reading is so 20th century.

EDIT: I take back what I said about this being one of the dumbest filters I've ever seen. This is unquestionably the dumbest filter I've ever seen, and by a long shot.

Lemond1985

In my almost 20 years on the internet, I have never seen anything even close.

I guess I should probably take the opport***ty to warn other users that if you use the first letter of of a banned word, followed by random characters, you can be accused of "using profanity", as I was, even though I did no such thing. Though 19 out of 20 times, the person doing it gets away with it. Worse (in my mind) is if you actually do use profanity, it gets filtered out and you're apparently kosher as far as the mods are concerned.

I'm to the point where I'm afraid to post anything here other than pictures, because TBH, I can't for the life of me figure out what's actually allowed here and what isn't.

banerjek

At the rate things are going, you won't be able to post anything else soon enough.

The ***nformed programmers who wrote this p***sh us all -- they must have gotten their degrees from some shady online ***versity. We should ***te against the stupidity that seems so ***versal these days.

Though there is some logic in preventing people from discussing re***bents and ***cycles in the road cycling forum.

seau grateau

Boohoo. Do some planks.

gnome

The filter has decided it's Monday and it doesn't want to work properly. Hopefully it gets fixed, soon. Good luck on your recovery from the broken ribs. Those really hurt.

I do find that I get more of a core workout on my road bike than my re***bents. Hiking with two walking poles gives me even more of all over workout without having to take up mountain biking.

Oso Polar

Or you can simply do road rides here in NY - here mountain biking starts right on the city streets, and each year gets closer and closer.

ThermionicScott 

It would be trivially easy to design the filter so that it would "know" whether the offending sequence of letters were a separate word or a part of a larger and completely unrelated word, too. Too trivial to even merit being a part of my Computer Science education 20 years ago.

More on point, sometimes I do notice some lower-back soreness in the early spring. That's when I'm still riding my fixed-gear primarily, and increasing my distances, so climbing out of the saddle and yanking on the bars really gets felt later on!

canklecat

Cycling helps but for the core, back, neck and shoulders it's mostly static. After too much of that the muscles get knotted up instead of just stronger. I do a lot of stretching and rollers to offset that.

I've been in physical therapy, again, for the past six weeks, still recovering from being hit by a car last year. It's been a big improvement over just riding my bike. Wednesday one of my PTs said my posture is better -- I'm not slumping and stooping as much.

I still have neck pain from an old C2 injury, and aches around the shoulder blade and lower back. I neglected PT after a 2001 wreck, so, it'll take awhile to improve. But now the pain is intermittent rather than constant.

I need to do more abdominal work. I've done just enough on the front of the abdomen and lower back muscles to tell the sides need work.

cthenn

Rear delts is where I feel it the most. A long day of climbing really works those muscles. I'm sure the broken ribs doesn't help with the pain levels in your core area...