be taken to prevent waste of power in carrying the foot back and behind,
rendering the lever movement useless behind the line where the power may
be made to tell. This loss will occur when the saddle is placed too far
forward. The foot in returning should supply the pull, and lift with a
push-back. The power here gained cannot compensate for power lost on the
forward and down thrust, and the saddle should be placed far enough back
to permit of the full power of the forward push and downward thrust. The
knee should never fully extend when the pedal is pushed to the point
where it is furthest from you, for if it is, there is danger in
hill-climbing of straining the knee as well as the tendons and muscles
of the back of the leg.
The handle-bars should be adapted to the work to be done, whether
racing, touring, or ordinary. They certainly should not be high enough
to prevent them from taking part of the weight of the body, nor so low
as to cramp any portion of the trunk.
Fatigue, with its various manifestations, cramp, stiffness, and
numbness, comes from too long a period of work without change of
position. For this reason different muscular combinations should be
called to do the same work, or different work should be done with unused
muscular combinations, permitting rest or partial rest to muscles that
have been taxed.
A bicycle should be fitted with adjustable handle-bar and saddle-post,
and in case of fatigue or cramp, a slight change in the adjustment will
reduce the tendency at once. Travelling should be done with as little
weight on the saddle as possible, working on the pedals and resting on
the handles. But when it comes to climbing, the push must be located
from a fulcrum, and that fulcrum must be the saddle. All weight must be
removed from the handles, and the wheel ridden by balance.
A hill should be coasted with the weight all on the saddle, the feet
supported, and the handles held firmly and lightly, a proper average
position for continuous work being, however, maintained. To carry weight
forward, the weight should be forward of the centre of gravity, and the
hands dropped.
The question of handle-bars, with the reason of their many varying
curves, may pertinently be discussed here. The bar is a pair of levers
finding a common fulcrum in the head or centre bar, and the difference
in curve has to do with the distribution of weight and the touch best
suited to control the bicycle according to position and individual
balance and lever power. A distribution of weight and leverage may be
made without altering the wheel base by the use of a different pattern
of bar that seems to suit the individual touch.
To analyze the curves in a handle-bar, and their different lever values,
would be difficult. Preference has much to do with it, and this may be
accounted for by the different steering touch of the differently
adjusted bars. The forward drop should never be so great that the face
cannot be lifted easily and the eyes always able to see up and ahead.
In the tire we look for elasticity, and the amount of air it contains
has much to do with the comfort of the rider and the speed of the wheel.
Soft tires are adapted for a rough or stony road. The soft tire may wear
out a little sooner, but the extra wear is fully compensated by the gain
in lessened shock and apparent improvement of wheeling surface. A very
hard tire is not necessarily made of rubber. The advantage of the rubber
tire is its elasticity, which should come between the fulcrum and the
power.
To attain a proper position and its equivalent adjustment, first have
the saddle as nearly right as possible so that you can work comfortably;
then have the handles and the height of the bar tested, working on these
until you can determine if the saddle is too far forward or too far
back. Then change the height of the bars to suit the saddle.
Next attend to gear. Find if with comfort you could exert more pressure
on the pedals. If so, have the gear increased. If there is cramp in the
foot, or the foot feels strained, have the length of crank changed. If
the foot is long in proportion to the other lever lengths, lengthen the
crank to permit of freer instep play; or have it shortened to relieve a
strained feeling in the foot. The crank length may be changed to relieve
either cramp or strain in the leg and thigh until the pressure and
length are arranged to suit the natural step or pace.
While these adjustments are in progress--and it may take months to
determine them--the shoe may cause discomfort. The slightest pressure, a
shoe too tight or ill-fitting, would be responsible for much more
discomfort than could possibly be caused by either crank or gear.
Waist-bands, or any pressure on the trunk, will cause numbness of the
foot; and a saddle of imperfect construction or wrong adjustment would
be responsible for the same evils--unequal pressure and unequal strains
and overcharged blood-vessels, with their accompanying discomforts of
cramp, fatigue, numbness, and more permanent disorders.
_CHAPTER XX._
_Exercise._
How shall be determined the proper amount of exercise for any
individual? The human body is constructed for use, and will suffer from
want of use, rust out, as it were; and it will suffer from over-use if
any one set of muscles or any one supply of nerve power is overtaxed.
Exercise, in some form, is necessary for every one; work is necessary;
recreation is necessary. Rest is to recreate, to renew. The food that we
eat is digested and made into blood; the blood flows through the system
of tissues, depositing building material and taking up waste matter. The
arterial system, physiologists tell us, supplies the new material; the
venous system takes up the waste material, returning the blood to the
heart, after which the fresh air comes in contact with the blood in the
lungs, and is aerated and oxygenated, and waste material given off. The
heart pumps the blood through the arterial and venous systems. When we
move or work, more blood is needed, and the heart pumps harder. When
little or no exercise is taken, the heart loses its vigor from want of
use; and it may be strained if overtaxed.
Brain power and nerve power depend on the blood supply for renewal of
their tissue. Any organ or any combination of organs and muscles, when
exercised, give off their accumulated material, and then, after a limit
of assimilation is reached, the products are reabsorbed. The materials
properly accumulate only when needed.
These facts bring to our notice three conditions--a condition of
atrophy, or too little use; a perfect condition of equilibrium of
forces; and a condition of strain from over-work. In the condition of
equilibrium or perfect health, the brain is active and the muscular
tissue under perfect control. The mind can receive impressions, and can
convey them at will; and the muscles obey without difficulty and without
fatigue, because of the great existing power of resistance. On the power
to resist fatigue depends the power of prolonging exertion.
In exercising we exert our powers, and if from lack of use or other
cause our amount of stored energy is small, exercise for even a very
short period will produce a condition which makes rest absolutely
necessary. Muscles must be gradually accustomed to work; and if work is
prolonged beyond the point where exercise is beneficial, a state of
tension and exhaustion ensues which can be remedied only by rest
prolonged enough to allow the system to recuperate. Where the tissues,
from disuse, have come to have little resistance value, a very gradual
and persistent course of exercise must be determined upon, for
unaccustomed muscles are quickly fatigued, and the subsequent rest they
require may seem out of proportion to the work done. This condition of
affairs is discouraging when not understood; yet there can be no
different result except in degree; and in degree must the condition be
changed and the tissues gradually renewed. If there is but little power
stored, only little may be used until the power of assimilation is
established.
The thin woman is benefited by bicycling; the liver works better, the
food digests better. The stout woman is benefited, for the exercise
hardens and condenses the flesh. The average healthy woman is kept in
the best of health by the exercise and plenty of pure, fresh air. For
the sedentary, the undeveloped, and the insufficiently nourished, the
bicycle seems to work wonders. All the powers are accelerated and a
general renewing of tissues takes place. The organs of digestion are
stimulated and do better work, the appetite improves, the complexion
brightens, and the mind responds readily. But people of either of these
classes should be careful not to prolong exercise until loss of appetite
is brought about; for the exercise should tend to increase, not to
decrease, the desire for food and power of assimilation.
Baths should be taken in moderation, the skin being kept in free,
healthy condition by dry rubs and tepid baths until the system is
brought to the state where the cold bath can be used beneficially. The
diet should be generous and wholesome, and care should be taken to avoid
food that does not digest easily. Sufficient clothing should be worn but
not too much, and all exercise should be avoided that might produce
very copious perspiration. Only a healthy activity of the skin should be
induced, and plenty of water drunk.
Do not work nervously. Go to work gently, and save your energies to make
the wheels go around. A thin person can remain thin and a fat person
remain fat while exercising assiduously if the exercise is not properly
directed.
To overcome fat, persistent, systematic, and regular exercise is needed,
and attention to diet must be considered essential. For the food
consumed produces certain results; and if the system selects and digests
most readily the fat-producing elements, their amount should be
curtailed, and a diet of good working quality chosen. Fat is burned in
producing heat; but if the same amount of fat-producing elements are
again taken into the system, the same amount of fat results. The
fat-producing tendency must be overcome, and the fat already accumulated
consumed, until a good healthy average of tissue is produced and
maintained.
Tea and coffee are not foods; they retard the assimilation of tissue,
and must be eliminated from the diet of the weight-reducer. Sugar and
starch--the latter when eaten is converted into sugar--are
heat-producing foods, first forming fats which are used as
energy-producing material. Persons wishing to reduce weight, therefore,
must manufacture, not so much fat, but bone and sinew. To produce these,
nitrogenous foods must be eaten. Fat consists largely of water; and
heavy work, like hill-climbing, which induces free perspiration, is
desirable. But any one wishing to seriously undertake weight-reduction
should learn to enjoy bicycling for itself before attempting this
application of the exercise.
Excess of fat produces physical laziness, which is hard to overcome; and
stout persons, after exercise, crave fat-producing elements of food to
reduce the tissue consumed. A taste seems to develop for sweet stuff and
mild stimulants, and it is difficult to refrain from indulging it. Stout
people are apt to believe, also, that they cannot endure exercise. They
cannot comfortably, and must work with care until they are in a fair
state of balance, where exercise ceases to fatigue, before attempting
anything like scientific weight-reducing. Sufficient exercise regularly
taken, proper diet persistently selected, will finally have the desired
effect.
Exercise sufficiently to produce good, thorough perspiration; take a
bath and rub down, and put on fresh clothing; avoid tea and coffee,
sugar and ice cream, dessert and pastry.
For those in health and in the habit of exercising regularly, there are
only the dangers of the sport to avoid while enjoying its pleasures and
benefits.
_CHAPTER XXI._
_Training._
If you intend a fifty-mile or a week’s trip awheel, it will be very
necessary to accustom yourself to the work before attempting a distance
you have not yet covered. Suppose, though your muscles are unaccustomed
to long-continued exercise, that you know how to wheel a bicycle and are
anxious to go with your friends. They perhaps wheel for an hour or two
hours daily, or for several hours twice a week. They are afraid to take
you with them; and you feel sure that you can go as far as they do, and
at the same rate of speed.
You must make your opportunity and prove your ability. Suppose you can
wheel for half an hour without fatigue. Wheel that half-hour every day
the weather permits; know your distance and your road; and then practise
increasing speed, that is, do your distance in less than the half-hour
without hurry. Start slowly, and keep the pace until you get your
breathing apparatus steady; then ride faster, and maintain that pace;
and so on, in increasing ratio. If you have been in the habit of
covering your distance in five minutes under the half-hour, next time
add that distance to your spin, and do it in your limit time. When you
easily do five miles in half an hour on the road, add a mile or more for
the next two or three spins; then do not wheel for one day; the next day
wheel twice the distance, wheel eight miles, and rest a day. Then double
your distance again. If you cannot do this without feeling the effects
seriously, go back to where you made your greatest distance with ease,
and start from that point again.
Keep a careful record of your outings, dates, wind, sun, time of day,
and humidity. The latter is very important, for on a hot, dry day,
greater distance can be done with safety than when evaporation is slow.
Consider all the conditions when you find that you are fatigued, and
decide if the trouble is with yourself or with the weather. Do not start
for at least an hour after eating, and always rest after exercise before
taking a meal. Observing these directions, you will soon find that you
are making very fair progress, that your confidence is assured, and that
you have acquired a certain amount of endurance, and can attempt any
reasonable distance.
Exercise transforms, making the inactive capable of performing work and
of enjoying opportunities for using their newly discovered powers. The
weak are strengthened; the strong retain and renew their stores of
strength; the young are symmetrically developed, and the older remain
supple and active. Exercise preserves and develops all parts of the
organism that are capable of performing work. Exercise is work, muscular
work; and in working the muscles, all the tissues become readjusted, and
all materials and accumulations tending to hinder movement are
diminished in quantity and equalized in distribution.
Ease of movement and a state of muscular inactivity are incompatible. To
be active, one must work; and the whole organism will respond, and
adjust itself to the conditions imposed by occupation and manner of
living. The complicated mechanisms and intricate processes of the human
body adapt themselves to required conditions; it is only necessary to
determine what those conditions shall be to produce certain results.
It is difficult for some to overcome the tendency to a state of
inactivity; and there are others to whom even the contemplation of
repose is distasteful. The physiological effects produced by exercise
differ in different individuals, active persons and those not in the
habit of doing muscular work being very differently affected. For
exercise, of whatever kind, is muscular work, and “muscular work tends
to modify the nutrition of all motor organs and to give them a structure
favorable for the performance of work.”
All muscular work is done through the contractile power of the muscles.
By use the fibres become freed from fat and other accumulations, the
muscles increase in size, the contractile power becomes greater, and the
impedimenta of fat, etc., are removed by the processes that are
accelerated by movement. “Repose causes atrophy of muscular tissue,” and
the necessary discernment and powers of discrimination must be
cultivated to avoid a tendency either in the direction of over-doing or
of insufficient exercise.
“The effect of muscular exercise is to render vital combustion more
active; it causes more active processes of assimilation.” “Muscular
education leads to an economy of forces. Practice leads to a diminution
of muscular expenditure”--more work done for power expended. For the
power to perform work depends on knowing how to do it properly. Real
strength lies, not so much in the mass of muscular tissue as in the
ability to use it.
“Exercise of strength demands the simultaneous action of a great number
of muscles.” “Exercise of speed involves repetition of movement and the
application of nervous energy.” “Exercises of endurance permit of
economy of fatigue,” and are characterized by the necessity of perfect
equilibrium between muscular effort and the powers of assimilation of
the system.
In exercise of strength, every muscle should bring its whole force into
play, and the bony structure is united by pressure to make a rigid
whole. “Exercises of speed are accompanied by fatigue out of proportion
to the mechanical work represented.” “Every movement needs the
intervention of a great number of muscles; each muscle must contract
with definite force in order that the whole work may lead to definite
movement.”
Co-ordination is the operation of choosing the muscles which shall
participate in a certain movement and of regulating the exact quantity
of nervous energy necessary to produce the right amount of contraction.
Automatism is acquired by practice; and the muscles must be exercised
regularly to enable them to respond intuitively. A complicated series
of movement can only be acquired gradually, unless the mind has a large
number of muscular combinations at command.
“Exhaustion will result from overwork even when well fed.” “Exercises of
endurance do not disturb the working of the organs; while increasing
their activity, it gives to the system the power to repair wasted
tissue, even during work.” Carbonic acid is not formed in excess, and is
eliminated without producing noticeable results.
The bicyclist, even though indulging moderately in the pastime, must
consider these things, and determine the course to be pursued; otherwise
the exercise will prove a bane instead of a blessing. There are
principles capable of general or special application; and there are
special laws that may be generalized; and all may be made to accord with
the exercise of bicycling, but each individual must accept a certain
responsibility in the matter. The bicycle having been accepted as a
means, the end sought for can be attained only by its intelligent use
and application.
One of the many advantages of cycling is that the exercise involved is
not limited to the use of any one set of muscles. The legs propel the
machine, the muscles of the trunk engage in balancing the body, and the
arms are employed in steering and controlling the front wheel. All the
larger joints are active, and are made supple as well as strengthened
and developed. Muscles, unless directed by mental effort, are useless.
The bones give stiffness, and act as levers and fulcrums; the muscles
are tools of the mind, levers wherewith to pull and push the bones into
position.
Precision of movement means economy of expenditure of force, no more
effort being expended than is necessary for the act of the moment.
People who hunt for the pedal, and try for the saddle two or three
times, and fall off because the bicycle fails to start, work hard enough
to have mounted a number of times; that is, they have lifted or
supported their own weight in different directions a number of times
without attaining their object. They appear to be awkward; they are
really unaccustomed to their work. Practice will accustom the muscles to
the work they have to do.
Try to do one thing only at a time. If it is mounting, for instance,
memorize each thing that must be done; how, when, and where to do it. Do
not think, because the mind does not at once grasp all that is forced
upon its attention, that your brain is of inferior quality; it may not
be able to adapt itself to that particular mental process at that
minute. But the effort made will result in added tissue, and next time
there will be more hope of success. Increase by a little at a time the
amount of exercise undertaken. You can gauge the practice you need only
by the amount of attention you give to the subject. After muscles are
once trained to an exercise, the mind will not readily lose power to
reproduce the combination, and experience begins to help.
Endurance means well-directed strength as well as capacity of power
stored in reserve; and the aim of all athletic work is to give an
increased store of strength, vitality, and power to draw upon, not
merely to expend the stock already on hand.
The muscular development that comes with bicycle exercise will often
cause surprise. In persons unaccustomed to active exercise, the increase
is most noticeable on the chest and forearms, the chest development
increasing two and three inches, the arm and forearm in proportion, and
the whole muscular system gaining in firmness and tone. Persistent
bicycling, prolonged exercise on the wheel, speed work on the track,
develop disproportionately the muscle of the leg. The track-man,
therefore, prepares for his season of work, not by exercising and
developing his legs, but by general exercise and special work that will
develop the arms and back and other sets of muscles not called upon for
heavy work during the season when he is to do his best. Getting up
speed, increasing speed, and hill-climbing all tend to develop the
muscles of the leg, which in such exercise are called upon for the heavy
work of push and thrust, using a concentrated power to propel. Light
dumbbell work is recommended as a good alternate for bicycle work and a
means of keeping the muscular system in balance.
Leisure and the weather limit bicycling; other causes are incidental.
The weather, indeed, affects bicycling more than any other sport. One of
the most imperative needs of bicycling is rapid evaporation, and
conditions that do not permit of that are unfavorable. Observe
atmospheric conditions, therefore, and avoid severe work when the dew
point is approached.
All the hard work wanted can be accomplished in half an hour after the
wheel has been taken out; or it may be used as a vehicle for travelling
steadily hour after hour for days consecutively; or an invigorating spin
of two or three hours may be taken, regulating the pace and the work.
One of the things to know about a bicycle is that you can get almost any
kind of work you want out of it. To realize that you are doing the work
you have been accustomed to have a horse do for you, and in a similar
way, and to know that many of a horseman’s rules for the care of their
working animals may be equally well applied to human beings who do the
same work, is apt, perhaps, to cause a sensation of unpleasant surprise.
It is a fact, however, that there is much information about the care of
horses that the cyclist may study and apply with advantage.
The bicycle is not an iron horse; it is more like skates; is in some
things like a boat; in some like a coasting sled; and in many ways is
different from anything else. It seems alive at times, as does a boat;
but it is the power propelling it that causes the delusion. The only
thing alive about bicycles is the persons who propel them; and if they
are only half alive before attempting to mount, they will become very
alert and keenly appreciative of all that concerns them long before the
sport has ceased to be a novelty.