‘Art, science or bullshit?’
The title of this feature is also the title of a lecture given by elite physio Graham Anderson at the 2012 International Cyclefit Symposium in Covent Garden. He identified that cycling is exceptional among sports in that it has the potential to both protect and uniquely stress the human form. In one sense the bicycle may be the default migratory path from a lifetime in running or rugby, for example, but on the other it is not entirely without risk of pain, injury or underperformance. And this vulnerability is due to bike riding being micro-manipulative, symmetrical and completely abstract.
‘When someone has an injury or discomfort, it is a painstaking endeavour to find the cause’
And as my co-founder at Cyclefit, Julian Wall, puts it, ‘The body is simply trying to run; it doesn’t know it is on a bike – it is effectively adapting around a state of virtual entrapment.’
Even so, isn’t it obvious when our bike fits us well when we ride? Can we not use common sense and trial and error to dial it in to perfection? Well, actually no. It is precisely because the bicycle is highly abstract, as well as being rigidly symmetrical, that our internal feedback is skewed towards counterintuition.
For example, I have lost count of the times a client has come in complaining of one leg’s shopping list
