It is not good for man to workout alone

Hello friends,

This past Sunday, I went for a ride with my brother-in-law, David, who also happens to be my wife's brother. We've ridden together quite a bit. We've done the DALMAC ride in Michigan (Lansing to Mackinaw city), Ride Idaho (400 or so miles around the state), all across Southwest Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Utah...anyway, you get the point.

As we were riding, quite fastly I might add, David commented that we always seem to push a little harder when we are riding together, as opposed to riding individually. Of course, I agreed.

In cycling there is an obvious benefit to taking turns "pulling." We'll each take a couple miles in front pushing hard, and then rotate to the back for a little break while the other person pulls. This provides a surprisingly nice benefit. So as you might imagine, if we work together well, we can go faster together than individually.

But could there be more to it than that?

Indeed, I was inside today browsing the Outside columns and saw this article that just came in:

How Your Workout Partner Boosts Your Performance: A new study explores why we're stronger and faster when someone is watching

In the new study, Sparks and his colleagues asked 12 volunteers, all with at least a year of weight-training experience, to perform three sets of bench presses at 60 percent of their one-rep max, all to failure and with two minutes of rest between each set. They did this test twice, on two separate days, once with two spotters on either side of the bar and once with no spotters visible. (The spotters were actually still there but were hidden behind a screen so the volunteers couldn’t see them while lifting.)

As expected, the volunteers managed to squeeze out more reps when they knew the spotters were watching than when they didn’t know, lifting a total of 11.2 percent more weight.

 And the article concludes:

In other words, we’re wired to respond to the presence of other people. They can help you dig deeper, or, conversely, they can help make a given level of exertion feel easier. That’s something many of us discover intuitively from training with a group... And as Sparks’ study reminds us, those other people don’t have to yell at us, offer technical guidance, or even say anything at all. All they have to do is show up.

 So there you have it. Aside from the wind benefit, your cycling buddies can help improve your performance just by showing up.

In other news, it's time to stop wasting your time doing regular pushups. To summarize, doing regular pushups is like having lutefisk at your family holiday gatherings. It may be of some benefit, but it's mostly just an outdated tradition. Thankfully, I stopped doing pushups years ago.

The article goes on to provides five alternatives - from Marco Sanchez, the assistant strength and conditioning coach of the San Jose Sharks.

Basically, instead of looking like your current self, you could look like this:

(Tattoo not included)

Here is a closer look:

Apparently, doing these variations of the standard pushup could also cause spontaneous loss of frontal teeth. We can only assume this is a direct result of kicking yourself in the face while performing a "Spiderman Pushup":

But really, that's just an added benefit. Without your front teeth, you will be about 0.2 lbs. lighter on your bike, and this will also likely increase your breathing capacity / oxygen intake.


Until next time,
Clay