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#21
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Help! Are there health benefits to unicycling?
Hey guys, bumping the threasd because now I'm doing a persuasive essay on "Unicycling being a better more fun way to stay in shape than other sports mile to mile/hour to hour." I need some more opinmions though from both sides so if other people want to contribute that'd be awesome. Anyway this thread fits the needs of my paper really well(two differing opinions presenting arguments) While I'm here I might as well contribute my 2 cents I guess. I personally think that unicycling has kept me in some of the best shape I've ever been in, it's improved my balance, core strength, leg strength, focus, and endurance. Besides wrestling I don't think I've ever gotten a better workout from any other sport or activity. -- Ducttape '-*buy my shirts*-' (www.zazzle.com/ducttapesunicycle*) '*watch my videos*' (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ducttapesunicycle) '*uniman comics*' (http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53444) '*original thread for uniman*' (http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49862) *'sigged quotes' (http://tinyurl.com/29b744)* ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ducttape's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/12006 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064 Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com |
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#22
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Help! Are there health benefits to unicycling?
Conrad.Nguyen;1102243 wrote: Unicycling is decent exercise, but it depends on what you do (trials, MUni, Distance, etc.). If you're looking for better fitness, your time would be better spent running, biking, or lifting weights. If you want to get better at unicyling, unicycle. No way!!! If you could only do one, unicycles are way better than the 3 mentioned above. But the best fitness is to cross train with lots of activities. But like you say, there are a lot of different sports on a unicycle. -- critter MUni! The closest I'll ever get to bull riding! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ critter's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/8739 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064 Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com |
#23
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Help! Are there health benefits to unicycling?
Mile for mile, unicycling is harder work than biking at the same speed. But I don't ride my bike at the same speed as the unicycle - I just can't ride a unicycle at 20mph. On the bike, you have a lot of control over how hard it is - because as you get faster, it becomes less efficient, so you can make it really hard to do 10 miles, which is harder than unicycling, or just pootle along at 15mph for 10 miles which is easier than unicycling. On a road bike, you can choose exactly how hard you're exercising at any point. That's why most fast mountain bikers train for fitness on road bikes. So yeah, I think mile for mile, unicycling isn't as any harder than road biking (and is probably less hard), assuming you ride hard on the road bike, and for a given time, you can do more exercise on a road bike. The big advantage of unicycling, is that it is super fun. I like my road bike, but, 9 times out of 10, if I'm out for a fun ride, I'll go for a muni. Joe -- joemarshall ' old pics' (http://tinyurl.com/56yl2f) 'new zealand pics' (http://s119.photobucket.com/albums/o...rshall_photos/) 'new pics' (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/joemarshall.org.uk) 'Where have I been riding? (GPS) ' (http://tinyurl.com/6fxw5x) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ joemarshall's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/1545 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064 Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com |
#24
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Help! Are there health benefits to unicycling?
Joe, we already knew commuting wasn't great exercise on a uni. I'm sure some of the avid road racers may disagree (mr. geared 36er fan!). Depending on what I'm doing I get anywhere from less aerobic exercise than if I were walking to about the amount achieved from jumping rope, from less resistance training than if I were sitting watching TV (not including core balance corrections) to more than if I were pumping it at the weight room. Unicycling includes too many different sports for this question to get a clear answer. -- hobo_chuck ------------------------------------------------------------------------ hobo_chuck's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/14113 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064 Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com |
#25
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Help! Are there health benefits to unicycling?
hobo_chuck;1126935 wrote: Depending on what I'm doing I get anywhere from less aerobic exercise than if I were walking to about the amount achieved from jumping rope, from less resistance training than if I were sitting watching TV (not including core balance corrections) to more than if I were pumping it at the weight room. That's exactly the problem in terms of aerobic exercise, on a unicycle you can't just go out and consistently go at a certain intensity for a certain distance, unless you're just road unicycling on the flat - in which case you're limited by spinning rather than fitness as to how fast you can go, unlike on a road bike where you can just change up another gear. You hit a hill, and you have to work harder, you hit a downhill, and you have to stop pedalling. Whereas on a road bike, you can choose how much energy you're putting in at any time. It's worse on a muni, you can't consistently exercise at all, there's so much difference between bits you spin out on, and bits you have to hop over, and between uphills and downhills. So in terms of aerobic exercise, if you train well on a road bike, you'll get fitter faster than training well on a unicycle, particularly doing anything other than riding a high geared road unicycle on the flat. Joe -- joemarshall ' old pics' (http://tinyurl.com/56yl2f) 'new zealand pics' (http://s119.photobucket.com/albums/o...rshall_photos/) 'new pics' (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/joemarshall.org.uk) 'Where have I been riding? (GPS) ' (http://tinyurl.com/6fxw5x) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ joemarshall's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/1545 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064 Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com |
#26
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Help! Are there health benefits to unicycling?
Haha, I remember a thread a year or two ago about what's gone down over the last few posts. Kind of turned into a -unicycling is the best and nothing can touch it!- vs. -use your head- argument. I also remember Joe getting in there... but, anyway, I second Joe. He knows what he's talking about. On a road bike, the conditions are so controlled and the choices of gearing are so many and so close that you can dial in -exactly- the power (literal power, force*distance/time) you need to put out to maintain your speed. If you're diligent enough, you can get a much more intense workout on a road bike than anything else. If you have a higher gear, and you're complaining that it's too easy, take the higher gear. You have no excuse not to . My argument last time was that, even with a coker, the equivalent gear ratio (or Total Gear Ratio, as someone put it here a while ago) just isn't high enough to necessitate sufficient FORCE from your legs to give you a workout at sane cadences. With the geared 36er, depending on your balance and strenth, that may or may not be true. Just riding on flat ground in high gear, there still isn't enough gain to give your legs the same workout they'd get on a bike, but the slightest of grades or headwinds will get you there. If I go out riding on my geared 36 into the wind or up SHALLOW grades (steeper grades mean low gear, which is way too easy), I get a pretty darned thorough workout, and I get all the opportunity I need to actually feel like I'm cranking something... but if I'm going with the wind, I still feel like I want a bigger gear. Now, because I'm lazy on my bike, I usually pick gears that give me a workout that's comparable to or slightly less intense than what I do on my geared coker... so the net effect is that I get nearly all my training on my uni now. If I seriously want to ride hard, I'll take the bike, but the uni is so much more fun, and is so "close enough" to my bike (in terms of how hard I work) that it's worth it to take the uni. Also, it makes me ride more because of how much fun it is. So if I ride 90% as hard on average, twice as much because it's fun, I end up in better shape! Win/win! That still doesn't mean a geared 36 is as good a fitness tool as a bike, though. Just means I should be riding harder than I actually am. :-/ -- chuckaeronut Uni to work to eat to live to uni to work to...! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ chuckaeronut's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/14677 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064 Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com |
#27
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Help! Are there health benefits to unicycling?
All I ride are hills when I guni on the 29. I agree riding the flats doesn't do it for me. But bikes are harder on my back. I don't get sore backs on a uni. In fact my back has never been better since I was 20 years old. I have degenerative back disease. But riding uni for the last 4 years has made me younger. -- critter MUni! The closest I'll ever get to bull riding! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ critter's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/8739 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064 Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com |
#28
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Help! Are there health benefits to unicycling?
And yeah, about stuff like muni - it's punishing, and your heart rate is up, but it's not consistent and consistently difficult. You feel thrashed afterwards, but not because you, say, dumped exactly 250 watts into the road for the last hour at 100 RPM. So, doing MUni or ungeared-coker riding on hard terrain, you'll definitely get a level of fitness others don't have, but it won't necessarily be the ability to push the pedals hard at a constant RPM and cadence for a long time without ever taking a break. On pretty much anything less than a geared coker (except, for some, maybe a geared 29), if you're just pedaling it on anything but the steepest climbs, you're not really getting training that will make you powerful (i.e. able to really stomp up hills in high gear and keep up high cadences in heavy gears for long periods of time). But don't get me wrong, you'll be REALLY fit, and you'll be able to punish yourself like that longer and harder than someone who doesn't do it... maybe even someone who spends all his time on a road bike. I'm a total roadie, and muni sucks the wind out of me quite reliably: while some of the people I can usually out-coker on the road are WAY stronger than me on rocky trails, and can keep trucking along through drop after drop, rock after rock. But it's rare that those hard spots last longer than a minute or two before there's 20 or 30 feet of just spinning on relatively smooth trail; on a road bike, you'll work 80% as hard for 50 times the contiguous time span, and that's where the coolness of the measurability and gear choice lies. So I'm not saying Muni's not hard; it's clearly really hard, and though I'm not really great at it, it ALWAYS can take energy faster than I can recoup it. It's really hard... but it's not consistently aerobic like what you can do on a road bike unless you're going up a perfectly smooth fire road with something like a 10% grade (assuming you're on a 24ish inch wheel). -- chuckaeronut Uni to work to eat to live to uni to work to...! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ chuckaeronut's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/14677 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064 Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com |
#29
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Help! Are there health benefits to unicycling?
I can compare mile-to-mile and hour-to-hour to running and biking. My comparison is based on distance or commuting riding. I don't do trials or muni or anything like that. In those cases, I don't think mile per mile is the appropriate measure. Mile per mile, running burns more than unicycling burns more than bicycling. Somebody above said that biking is better exercise mile per mile but that's demonstrably false. Mile per mile you are working harder on a unicycle. No coasting means that you are working as hard or harder to move forward on a unicycle, and then you sink a positive amount of energy into balance that you do not on a bicycle. On the road, I typically burn about 130 calories per mile running, 75-100 calories per mile unicycling, and 50-70 calories per mile bicycling. Hour per hour, bicycling and running can be equal and unicycling cannot keep up at the high end. Whatever your physical capacity is for running or bicycling, you can sink that energy into either and be limited by your V02 max or other physical factors rather than your choice of exercise. Unicycling's upper limit, in distance or commuting, is not physical but one of mental energy and balance. For example, I can go out and run a marathon averaging a heart rate around 170 beats per minute. I should be able to maintain something similar on a bicycle, but I just can't get up to that high a heart rate on a unicycle except when I'm climbing a big hill. Even if I had a big hill that I could theoretically climb for three hours, it takes an amount of mental energy, balance, and fast-twitch as opposed to slow-twitch muscle action to climb hills on a unicycle that I just couldn't do it. Hour for hour I can get a better workout on a bike or a unicycle. For cross training, the unicycle's unique qualities and limitations make it a better way to train for running than does a bicycle. It keeps me at my long-run heart rate and emphasizes balance and core. Hope that helps. Z -- boisei ------------------------------------------------------------------------ boisei's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/16116 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064 Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com |
#30
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Help! Are there health benefits to unicycling?
boisei;1127574 wrote: Somebody above said that biking is better exercise mile per mile but that's demonstrably false. Mile per mile you are working harder on a unicycle. No coasting means that you are working as hard or harder to move forward on a unicycle, and then you sink a positive amount of energy into balance that you do not on a bicycle. That's not right. I think, if you go a mile at 26 mph on a bike, you use way more energy per mile than doing a mile at 15 mph on a unicycle. So, if you go out and do a 10 mile ride on a bike, you can potentially tire yourself out more than a 10 mile ride on a unicycle. It's because energy used vs speed is not a linear relationship, thanks to air & rolling resistance. You're only right if you ride at the same speed on the bike and the unicycle. I think as you get to high speeds on the bike, the inefficiency due to air resistance and rolling resistance become high enough that you're less efficient per mile than the unicycle. On my commute, I find I can make myself way more tired by hammering it on the bike than hammering it on the unicycle, because I can ride so much harder on the bike. And that's a fixed distance. Joe -- joemarshall ' old pics' (http://tinyurl.com/56yl2f) 'new zealand pics' (http://s119.photobucket.com/albums/o...rshall_photos/) 'new pics' (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/joemarshall.org.uk) 'Where have I been riding? (GPS) ' (http://tinyurl.com/6fxw5x) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ joemarshall's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/1545 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064 Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.usenet.com |
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