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Comment by justinsteele | Hacker News Reader

"Mundane" cycling daily is all that it takes to get the majority of health benefits. No reason to downplay what he's doing.

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Cycling is actually not that healthy. Repetitive short movements shorten your muscles, which causes all kinds of problems.

>> Cycling is actually not that healthy.

As someone who works out regularly but never cycles, this seems difficult to believe. Surely the cardiovascular benefits outweigh any negatives from "muscle shortening" (first I've heard of this) compared to no activity.

Unless your point is "some types of exercise are better than cycling" in which case, sure.

Accuracy is so important in HN :)

Fact - cycling creates short leg muscles, hamstrings in particular. For those of us who have tight hamstrings, which is most males (according to my subjective, biased observations), this is not good. Creates back problems later on.

I agree that some cycling is better than no activity. But I would say that going to a hooker every night is also better for you health wise than staying in and watching tv, as long as you wear at least 2 condoms.

As someone who has put in tens of thousands of km's on bicycles over the years, I'm wondering when these alleged downsides are supposed to kick in. According to my own subjective, self-observations, it has done nothing but good for me.

In exactly 137 days.

Precisely the type of backwards-ass opinion based upon flawed anecdotal evidence I love to see!

Keep it up champ!

Since we're nitpicking - wearing two condoms is a terrible idea. The friction will break them.

Cycling is health in so far as it is more exercise and fresh air than a majority of the population gets ever. Cycling too much has its side effect as does just about everything in life.

Right, but in other activities if you practice safely and under professional supervision you can usually minimize the risk. Here the movement is short and repetitive which in turn builds short muscles. It's a "feature", not a corner case "bug".

I'm 100% sure you don't know what you're talking about. Please provide sources for your statement and prove me wrong.

If you asked nicer I would have googled it for you, but you can do that yourself.

Googling for cycling short muscles turned up nothing relevant on the first page, for me.

A list of health benefits of cycling, including peer-reviewed publications that the references come from. http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1015.html

Majority of health benefits? It is a midly stressing cardio vascular activity and given the circumstances (delivery) it is probably nothing better than jumping up a few times and letting gravity get hold of you.

I am not saying it is worthless but some people praise this as the second coming of Sparta its legion training sets.

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