Episode 33: Cycling
Description: I want to ride my bicycle; I want to ride my bike…
If you cycle, you’re fit, right? Riding a bike is not a natural human movement, and cycling a lot with little other movement endeavors has the components of a junk-food movement diet. Let’s look beyond the few single nutrients that biking provides and explore a more nutritious movement diet—because doing the same thing over and over again means you are missing a whole spectrum of movement nutrients. Katy answers questions about bone density, kids and bikes, and the biological tax of bicycles.
DANI: It’s the Katy Says podcast, where movement geek, Dani Hemmat – that’s me – joins biomechanist Katy Bowman – that’s her – author of Move Your DNA for discussions on body mechanics, movement nutrition, natural movement, and how movement can be the solution to modern ailments we all experience. What’s up!? Oh, so much is up – we have to talk about something before we get going. Something big.
KATY: So much is up! It’s something!
DANI: I know.
KATY: Um, you want to talk about it?
DANI: I want you to talk about it with me.
KATY: I want you to – well, the thing – well, the thing is is, I – how did you – how were you notified that we were nominated for the International Podcast Day, which was September 30th, their gratitude award? So how did that even come about? Because I didn’t even know.
DANI: Oh, okay. Yeah – I was just looking around at some cool, uh, you know, trying to improve my podcastiness and came across this thing, and you actually had to nominate your own podcast. You couldn’t – someone else couldn’t nominate you, you had to apply to be a part of their group. And then what happened is – this was an award for this wonderful organization called My Podcast Reviews, which just gathers all reviews about a person’s podcasts, and the only way that you could win it was by reviews from your listeners about how your podcast had changed their life for the better, hopefully. It was a gratitude award.
KATY: I’m homeless now, and I appreciate it!
DANI: Yes, thanks a lot, Katy.
KATY: Thanks a lot, minimalism.
DANI: Way to go, I miss my couch. Anyway, yeah. So, our listeners –
KATY: My goodness.
DANI: Oh, my gosh. Oh my gosh. They’re the best.
KATY: And what happened? You didn’t even – okay, what happened?
DANI: What happened is when they were going to do it, they were going to announce it was International Podcast Day which was September 30th. Last week, I guess, I was sitting at home waiting for the live announcement, and I realized I had to go get something for those darn kids that live in my house, and –
KATY: You have children living in your house?
DANI: Can you believe it? And they need things like clothes – ugh.
KATY: Attention.
DANI: Attention, food. I’m at Costco getting reindeer for nature school and got a little notification from Twitter that we won. And I’m trying to call you – and I don’t know, did you like, bury your phone or something?
KATY: Well, you know, I do not –
DANI: Where were you?
KATY: I don’t keep my phone on me, because if I did I would never, ever have a work break. So – I mean, okay, keep in mind, this was like, at 4:30 I had had a bunch of people over for dinner because we do that a lot, right? Listen to the Community episode. So at the moment that you were texting me was in the middle of a Footloose dance party with 4 adults and like 10 kids, and we were doing this crazy dancing and I kept hearing this bing, bing, and I pick it up and it’s like, Dani, Dani, Dani. Where are you? What are you doing? We won!
DANI: There was –
KATY: Go to Twitter!
DANI: I was a little frantic.
KATY: And I went to Twitter and there were 40 notifications. Congratulations! They just announced it, oh my gosh! And I was kind of, like, what do I do? Oh my god, what do I do? Dani! Do I go online? Because they wanted us to be on the show, because it was – it was for podcasting –
DANI: It was live.
KATY: It was live, and it was really interesting. It was a new technology called Blab?
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: So blab is actually – okay, so I’m so far behind. It took me forever to get a podcast and I just got Instagram, and now everybody’s like, Do Periscope! So evidently, we are back to video, we were at blogs, and then we were at podcasts, and now we are at video constantly. Just move in with me, everybody. That’s going to be the next thing, is just everybody just gets to move into your house. But Blab is this really cool – what is it, it’s like a chat group video, live – it’s kind of like Google Hangouts only it’s Periscope, where I just found out about, where people are commenting or chatting with each other and it was just so fast and streamlined. So they had been on Blab all day and announced on Blab, and so I had to figure out how to log into Blab.
DANI: Oh, you were awesome, though, that you got on.
KATY: Yeah, except that I didn’t know it was video, I thought I was calling into a radio, and so – I kid you not, I was like the grungiest, it’s like –
DANI: Well, you’d just gotten off of a Footloose dance party, for goodness’ sake. What should we expect?
KATY: I was sweaty. I was – I was covered in glitter and wearing my prom clothes from 1981. But anyway.
DANI: Awesome.
KATY: Yeah, it was great. So for all of you out there who left a review, oh my goodness, I don’t even know how to express my gratitude other than to say it is my total pleasure to do this podcast for you. The end.
DANI: Yeah. Thank you, everybody. I know it’s not easy to log in and leave those reviews, and for those of you that took the time that did, you helped us win. And we won the first one ever – like, it was the first time they’ve ever given this reward.
KATY: Yeah, yeah. And it wasn’t based on size or popularity, right? Because there are huge blogs who have tremendous numbers of reviews and you know, listeners, like in the millions.
DANI: Yeah, yeah.
KATY: And that is not us, but at the same time, we have a great community of people. So I love – I love that we speak to a small group of people who are really in it to win it. Like they’re committed to this big picture, they’re not just listening to it for entertainment – like, thank goodness.
DANI: Well.
KATY: But for tips, and they’re like, okay, I’m ready for the next step to transition my life. And wow, I’m just like, humbled.
DANI: Yeah. It was awesome. All right.
KATY: What are we talking about today?
DANI: Today. Let’s roll forward. Today’s episode is on cycling. On bikes. Maybe unicycles, tri-cycles? Okay.
KATY: Tri-cycles?
DANI: Tri-cycles? What do you call it? A tri-cicle?
KATY: A tricycle – you know, like a popsicle, only three.
DANI: So is it like – it’s not a pop-cycle? You don’t even –
KATY: I don’t know. See? Now we’re to the words.
DANI: I don’t know where I am. I don’t know. I’m just stuck here in front of a microphone, yeah.
KATY: You’re at home with all of those children who live in your house.
DANI: Yeah. Well, let’s just talk about bicycles.
KATY: Okay.
DANI: But let’s talk about bikes.
KATY: All this does apply to anything with wheels, essentially, but yeah, let’s talk about bikes.
DANI: Sure, yeah. Sure. And how it all is tied in with nutritious movement and junk food movement.
KATY: Bikes are popular. They’re huge – cycling is hugely popular, and um, we did a show on natural movement a while back, and I think over the last few years I’ve written at least a couple of posts on this idea of junk food movement. So the ones off the top of my head I know are – the podcast names if you want to go and link to them in the show notes –
DANI: Sure. Sure.
KATY: Junk food walking and side effects – and again, these are blog posts that are – I mean, at least 2 years old. I have a new one coming out because, again, as I’m refining this idea of movement nutrition, I think I have better language now to talk about this idea of junk food movement – but every time I use “junk food” to describe an exercise, well, there’s a lot of – well, I wouldn’t say protests as much as clarifying questions. There’s certainly protests, but not with anyone who has been listening for a while. I think it’s about clarifying questions, like, wait, wait, what’s junk food?
DANI: Yeah. I mean, there’s some blowback – because you don’t want to – you know, your exercising so you think, “I’m doing this great thing.” And then –
KATY: Sure.
DANI: – no one thinks junk food sounds good, so when you hear it together, you’re like, what what?
KATY: Even though – I mean, who doesn’t love junk food, right? So it’s like, I think –
DANI: I like pop-cycles.
KATY: You know, pop-cycles are so good.
DANI: That’s my favorite junk food.
KATY: All right, so where do we start? What’s the first?
DANI: Okay, well, let’s just kind of define a quick description of junk food movement for those of you who haven’t read Move Your DNA or the posts that you just mentioned. You could just give us a rundown, quickly.
KATY: Yeah. Yeah. And I also think that in the beginning of Don’t Just Sit There I wrote this whole, long section on if you could only eat out of a movie theater, you know? That might help tie it in, too. So if you have that book, go read that section again. So junk food – I mean, “junk” implies negative, but what I’m asking you to do with this idea of junk food is keep the positive benefit – junk food is something that you eat that provides a short-term satisfaction, whether it’s physiological or psychological at the expense of long-term health. So if you are starving, if you have nothing else, junk food could be highly valuable, because in the end, having some calories is better than having no calories. So if you can keep that in mind – especially those of you who love your bicycle – I don’t mean junk food in the negative connotation. I’m simply looking for a vernacular or a term that we get, to go, okay, I get that this junk food thing that I’m eating has got some tradeoffs of the good and the bad, all right? That’s fine. So junk food movement, or junk movement, in that same way, is a way of moving that will provide some sort of short-term – again – physiological or psychological benefit. Some sort of fitness benefit, but there is an expense to the long-term health. So there’s a tax, a biological tax that comes with it, or it might make some of you better but not all of you better. So there are foods that can provide some nutrients but not all of the nutrients. So they make some of you better, but not all of you better. And then just to refine this a little bit more for this discussion, right now it seems like there’s two categories, right?
DANI: Right.
KATY: Nutritious movement and junk food movement, but there are foods that we wouldn’t call junk food but we’re still aware of their level of being processed, and we’d recognize that we couldn’t sustain ourselves entirely on them. So I’m thinking of something – so like, there’s the junk food candy bar, and sorry, Snickers. You know I love you, but I’m always going to make you my junk food example. But then we could find probably a high-quality or a higher-quality convenience bar that had a lot more nutrition to it; maybe it had protein powder was in there or whatever. But it still wouldn’t be – it wouldn’t satisfy all of your physiological requirements as a nutritious diet would. All right? So keep in mind: there are foods and then there are diets, and those are two different things. So you can have a junk food Snickers, but you couldn’t subsist solely on Snickers. And then there’s the way that a Snickers would interact with good foods surrounding the Snickers, or Snickers and then that’s all you’re eating. So when we’re talking about junk movement, there are like junk exercises, and then there’s a junky movement diet overall, or perhaps a starvation diet where you’re not eating anything else?
DANI: Right.
KATY: So a lot of people who exercise only exercise, and then they’re sedentary the rest of the time. So what they do for that small amount of time – you want it to be as nutritious as possible, because if you’re picking for your only exercise something that is junk food movement, where the biological tax is there – as well as some benefit, but there’s also a tax – then you’re going to have some sort of health outcomes. In the same way that you would if you didn’t eat enough nutrients, either because you’re not eating that much and then you’re only eating junk food, or you’re trying to subsist solely on supplements and vitamins. Like, if a protein shake – I’m trying to think of, like, a Slim-Fast. Right? Like, wasn’t that a diet? When I remember my mom being on something where it was 3 shakes a day and a nutritious dinner.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: That was a thing, right? That still is a thing.
DANI: Still is a thing. It still is a thing, yep.
KATY: So, keep all that in mind. So I’m going to refer back to that.
DANI: Okay.
KATY: Um, okay. Go.
DANI: Well, now, let’s move into that direction of, like, I love that biological tax term. Or the expenses of cycling. What are some of the costs associated with cycling?
KATY: Ooh, okay, well, I’m going to call on a little bit of previous knowledge, so either from reading Move Your DNA or listening to the Loads podcast, which was early on, before we were award winning. I threw that in there, what a jerk.
DANI: Way back when, yeah.
KATY: This was like going back to that movement as mechanical nutrients, where there are some inputs. So with cycling, the easiest ways to think about it would be that the loads in this case – I mean, every single exercise is going to have a different what’s junky about it, and sometimes what’s junky about it is what it has, and sometimes what’s junky about it is what it’s missing. So, like, if we go back to the Snickers we could be like, well, there’s trans fats and who knows – dyes, or whatever else are in there that’s junk. I don’t know, I’m not a biochemist, so I don’t know all the crap that’s in there. But if we can say that there’s some negative things – too much sugar, or whatever – but then there’s also of a Snickers diet what it’s missing. It’s missing enough Vitamin C, it’s missing amounts of protein, it’s missing – okay, so there’s, there’s 2 – what it has that’s bad for you that your body has to cope with and also what it’s missing, what it doesn’t have. So with cycling, what it has is excessive amounts of pressure on your fun bits, right? So your junk – I don’t want to use junk, because junk is my term for what – I don’t even know what, I’m so embarrassed right now! And I’m not an embarrassed person, but I should just do this podcast talking the way I normally do. But everything – like, your dangly fun bits between your legs, right? You’ve got pressure, you’ve got pressure on your tailbone, on your coccyx, you’ve got pressure on your pelvic floor. All of your stuff has tubes through it, so when you add pressure to tubes you change the flow within those tubes, you know? If anyone has dealt with – you know, I think cyclists care about friction, right?
DANI: Oh, yeah.
KATY: I believe there’s a question about this later. You know, you’re thinking of like, minimizing skin – like, oh, I don’t want the chafing, but it’s like, yes, but there’s cellular chafing as well, that doesn’t have that immediate feel. So all of that’s going on. And then there are compensations, like maybe you clench your butt slightly all the time, you would tuck your tailbone so you don’t have pressure on any particular bits. Maybe you get a seat with a cutout in it, but now when – it’s like, if you sit on a donut, the stuff inside the ring is under higher pressure, and there’s short-term comfort and then there’s things like long-term adaptation. So that all happens within a moment, and the issue is more the adaptation to that. So cycling for 5 minutes is different than cycling everywhere for 5 years. So there are cellular changes to – I mean, people get thickening to the skin, they get butt calluses, right? Like, you get – you get textural changes, postural changes, flow changes, and then there are also the ailments that rise up when things aren’t there. So with cycling, most research is bone density, because cycling is not a weight-bearing activity. Bones develop based on how much weight they are bearing, so when you have something like swimming or something like cycling, what the research is really starting to hone in on are how does that change total bone density? Although more recently, local bone density. Because your total bone density is not really as big of a deal as your local bone density. Like, I could take a test and I could get a number, a total number of how I stack up relative to other people, but if my femur’s what is at risk for fracturing, and if my chance of dying is very high within 1 year after fracturing my hip, I’m going to be most concerned with, well, what is my femoral bone density? I encourage people to go out and always read the literature for themselves, the research for themselves. When you’re reading, you want to be looking at: is this measuring total bone density, or is it measuring site-specific bone density? Because you are going to see, as you’re cycling, because you’re doing any exercise, an increase in total bone densities often. But when they start comparing, like, well, what about the femoral neck or – if you think of the thigh bone, the bone that goes off to your hip socket and then it kind of thins? Like, that space and the density goes down, it’s very susceptible for fracture. So maybe my total bone density can go up, but my density within my hips can go down. So you just want to make sure that when you’re reading, be aware of what is being measured. So there’s a lot of literature on this, so I’m going to throw out some titles – can I throw out some titles?
DANI: Please do.
KATY: Just if someone’s like, I want to go read more right now. Here we go! Bone Related Health Status in Adolescent Cyclists. That’s one article. Low Bone Mineral Density in Highly – I missed a word there. I think it’s like Highly Trained Master Cyclists. I don’t know. I forgot a word. Bone Loss Over One Year of Training and Competition in Female Cyclists. Bone Mineral Density of Female Athletes in Different Sports. Evaluation of the Bone Status in High Level Cyclists. So this is not new, it has certainly become more vigorously – as mechanotransduction and as forces are coming back into biology and movement, people are starting to look at mechanisms for these diseases, um, and it’s not only cycling, it’s just kind of what we’re talking about today can have – you can look at lots of different sports and see how they compare. There’s some great articles comparing lots of different sports to see how they compared to each other in terms of bone density.
DANI: Are these articles – an Everyday Jane can have access to, or are they –
KATY: See, that’s the thing –
DANI: Or are they your smart person articles?
KATY: These are research articles.
DANI: Okay.
KATY: So you’re going to find them maybe in Google Scholar or PubMed.
DANI: All right. I won’t promise them for the notes.
KATY: No – well, we can at least link to them.
DANI: Okay.
KATY: We can link to the article and then anyone can choose to pay the $30 to read it or whatever, and sometimes you can find copies of it for free online if they have open access and stuff. But yes, that is the rub.
DANI: Okay.
KATY: The rub is, you want to learn, but you’re being charged for it. I mean, I guess – I mean, you’re looking at someone else’s work and whatnot. I think everyone should podcast everything free, all the time! The world would be so great. Anyway, okay.
DANI: Okay.
KATY: So.
DANI: Well, let’s talk bout – one thing. Well, there’s so much, of course, I love about your work and your teaching. But variables – you’ve introduced my entire thought process to there’s variables for everything.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DANI: And cycling has its own variables, right?
KATY: Yeah.
DANI: So all these things that we’re talking about, they’re not just from one kind of bike. There’s different kinds of biking, there’s different bikes, there’s different, you know, amounts, different terrains. What are some of the things that – some of the differences that we can look at? Because someone might be listening, going oh my gosh! Oh, no!
DANI: Yeah.
KATY: Well, anything that affects the load, so again, I’ll refer you back to Move Your DNA and I actually use cycling in the book to go, okay, so, let’s look at cycling. You could be extremely fit cycling, you can hit all of your fitness – like, your heart rate, your – anything associated with fitness, your VO2 Max, your resting heart rate, the minutes of endurance training – there’s all those types of variables.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: But then again, when you look at health variables like bone density, fracture risk, risk of osteoporosis and stuff, those are usually not associated with fitness. So you can have really high fitness competitive medals and you can still, choosing your tests, not do very well when it comes to ‘how well am I going to walk?’ when I’m 60 years old. What’s my risk of falling down? What’s my risk, you know, of needing to be in a home or whatever.
DANI: Yeah.
KATY: So that’s like, that’s always my perspective. My perspective is not that you love it, that it makes you fit, that it makes you hot. I’m not saying – I’m not talking about any of those things. I’m a biological girl? So I’m talking about biological variables. So when it comes to cycling variables – again, cycling is a category that includes, like, are you riding a road bike or a mountain bike? Are you riding that mountain bike on a road? You know, like –
DANI: Right.
KATY: There’s a type of bike and a type of riding.
DANI: Are you up on your feet, are you down on the seat?
KATY: Exactly. Hills, not hills, how much are you standing, how bumpy is it? I was like uhhhhh – did it come through?
DANI: That was good sound effects.
KATY: Thank you, thank you.
DANI: Yeah, that was way better than your rapping. That was awesome.
KATY: Right. What do you mean?! Wait, was that a backhanded compliment?
DANI: What? No! No, your sound effects are good. Let’s just stop there and go forward.
KATY: I’m not a ramper, I’m a bumper. All right. I’m all about the texture. So – and then there is, again, cycling is just a food. What is your diet like around that? So again, with research, we have a lot of people trying to use research, you have to remember that science is about looking at all of the data collected about all of it, all together, at the same time. So you know, you don’t want to pull out one article and wave it around and go, see? See? You have to look at all of it. So you know, a lot of times as people are losing bone loss who are cyclists, they’re only cycling. It’s their only form of movement. And so again, so much of this – you’re – you are how you move –
DANI: Right.
KATY: So you’re not how you cycle as much as you are how you move. So how you move during your cycling hours is certainly important, but what about all of the rest of it. Like, every time that you could walk to the store you just grab your bike because it’s faster, you know, you might want to swap out some of that time for something else, which we’ll get to in a second. Posture on the bike? There’s a lot of –
DANI: Did you ever watch the Triplets of Belville?
KATY: I love that movie! Yeah, it’s in my side effects. It’s in one of my blog posts.
DANI: Yeah, yeah, yeah! It is – you’re right. You’re right. Okay.
KATY: Like, it is the extreme cyclist to me, but that’s one type of cyclist.
DANI: Right.
KATY: That is like your hard-core, elite, master cyclist who just cycles to bed. It’s like, I don’t even walk, I just cycle over here and my quads are the size of a mountain. That’s your – like, the stereotype. But I know a lot of people who are like that, and they have, you know, they’ve got lordosis of the neck – they basically look like they’re on the bike even when they’re off the bike. I live in a senior community in the Pacific Northwest, so there’s a lot of cyclists. Cycling is probably the #1 sport up here and I live on a trail that goes 120 miles. So I see cyclists all of the time. So my data collection for cyclists visually and seeing their resting alignment because they all get off kind of right where we are because we live right at this spot, like a rest spot, a meet up spot, and I kid you not, I’ll see a couple people a day who when they get off of their bike walk in a way that looks like they’re still pedaling. They’re just, like, lifting their legs up off the ground. It’s in front of them, and they’re in their clip-ons, oh my goodness. It’s like the transition phase of a triathlon. When you watch a triathlon, you’ll see after someone comes off of a long ride, their psoas muscles have adjusted and their first quarter mile of a run is trying to get that out of their system because they don’t even have a full stride, right? They’re just kind of like running like they’re on their bikes.
DANI: That’s crazy.
KATY: So anyway. So imagine if that happens over a period of an hour to what degree that is happening on a cellular level, like an adaptation, when you do it primarily as your primary exercise all of the time. That adaptation is deep and it doesn’t come out to the extent that you think it does, just because you think you’re done being on a bike. So I guess those would be variables.
DANI: Okay, cool. Well, let’s cycle back to the bone density issue.
KATY: Come on, come on.
DANI: How about kids? Got a lot of questions about kids.
KATY: Yeah. Sure.
DANI: Do your kids ride bikes?
KATY: So, yes.
DANI: They’re kind of little, though, aren’t they still?
KATY: Yeah, but my son was riding a two-wheeler when he was 2.
DANI: Okay.
KATY: So, yes. I mean, cycling – cycling is, like, a fun thing to do. It certainly is a movement skill. It’s part of childhood, it’s part of Americana. It’s part of – I mean, I shouldn’t even say Americana because we go to the – we go to the Holland quite a bit. We go to the Netherlands often where cycling is a way of life.
DANI: Yeah, I mean, in so many countries it’s just that’s the transportation.
KATY: Everyone in France just went – !!!! – Holland, no, they stole the bicycle from us! Anyway. So – so, yes. I am not anti-bicycle, in the same way that, like, my kids eat ice cream. My kids eat – they watch TV – or they watch videos. There are things that are clearly not perfectly nutritious, but this is the real world, and this is society, and so like I’m not a freak in that way. We just – we dial it back so that what’s good about it can be preserved. So, like, there’s family movie night and then there’s watching 2 hours of TV every single day, and where family movie night doesn’t even have a value anymore, right? And so – anyway. So the way that I look at cycling for my children, and my son was into bicycles and motorcycles from the time that he was maybe 6 or 7 months old. Brrrm-brrrms and mamas – so those were motorcycles and bikes. And he wanted one, and he got his first bicycle when he was 1 – a strider bike – which I’ll talk about later, because there’s a couple parent questions. And so he was on his strider bike and he was riding a pedal bike fully without training wheels – I mean, he never had a training wheel phase because he went from strider bike to pedal bike when he was 2. So he was maybe 2 and 4 months, and my daughter’s the same – she was maybe a little bit later. She was 3. So, yes – however, I wouldn’t ever check off that they were cycling as they’re getting their exercise, meaning that cycling is dessert. They cycle after they eat dinner, which would be the equivalent to lots of walking for the day.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: So I know there are some people that are like, I’m so glad that my kid gets exercise, he rides his bike all the time – it’s like, I don’t really count cycling as towards any movement requirement. If it’s a choice between TV and cycling, certainly cycling has more movement – but again, when it comes to bone density, bone density is almost more important – I mean, it is more important in children in that your peak bone mass is established while you are a juvenile. So your bone density will never become any higher than it is, you know, around the age of 17. So it’s like – you know, you say you can’t really “bank” exercise, and bone is one of those ways in which you are actually establishing the breadth or the amount of your bank account. And so if you are a under-moved child, you will become a very frail adult. And you can’t ever really eek – you can’t eek it as much as you can when you’re a child. So you’re setting the quantity. So that’s why – it’s like, once they’re older, I mean – whatever they want to do when they’re older they’re going to do – but for me, what I can do as a parent is go yeah, let’s ride bikes, but also I explain – it’s like dessert. Did you walk today? Did you do any walking yet? Maybe we should go walking for an hour, or we’ll cycle to where we’re going to walk. Anyway, those are like, tips for later.
DANI: Okay. And you said you had a research article that you were talking about that talked about juvenile – oh, yeah, I listed it at the beginning, so the Bone Related Health Status in Adolescent Cyclists – what they’re noticing are in a lot of these populations, like the movement that kids get the most is actually cycling. So that’s why saying that a kid gets exercise, it’s like they still have really low peak bone mass because that exercise that many kids get are swimming and cycling – both non-bone builders. So as a parent, right, you’re like struggling to get your kids to move – I totally get it – and you’re like, so they’re in swim lessons, and they love being able to swim and swim and swim, and they love bikes, and I can go for a run or I can go for a walk and they can keep up with me, and we do that because – because that’s good, right? Like, them being fit – we’ve made fitness the variable and not bone mass building. So that’s where I’m like, hey, and not just me – so these researchers are like, these kids have bone density problems, osteoporosis is increasing. Why? It’s like, okay, well, a lot of people for their primary movement are doing non-bone building things, so you end up as a very fit adult with the same risk of hip and wrist fractures as those who did no exercise, because to your hips you are sedentary.
DANI: Right.
KATY: To your knees, you are sedentary.
DANI: And I think that whole fitness thing, that really ties in with our obsession with cardio.
KATY: It does.
DANI: You know how we think, cardio, cardio, cardio, it’s the best thing, you know, to do! And that’s – I mean, to some you say, I think biking is awesome, and I know you think this, too. It’s awesome for the environment, and you’re outside, and it’s affordable transportation. I live in a town that is constantly in the top 3 of the best biking cities in the United States. There’s like 300 miles of biking trails just in our little town, and 300 days of sunshine a year. So there’s – everybody bikes in Boulder. That’s just – it’s a biking town. And so I see the –
KATY: Is that the motto?
DANI: Yeah. Yeah, I’m going to submit that. I hope I win, I’m on a winning streak!
KATY: You are.
DANI: I’m going to submit that to the city council. I’m going to go see the mayor tomorrow. Everybody bikes in Boulder.
KATY: You’re going to bike over.
DANI: Um, I just want to say that biking is good, but I think that whole – the cardio thing – it’s probably pretty hard for some people to process when they’re thinking, well, my kid’s out there biking all the time, or I’m biking all the time, so I am fit. This is good stuff for us to talk about.
KATY: Well, it’s – this is the scientific process is reducing things down to variables, and in the movement community and exercise physiology, and in movement science as a whole, the variable that we’ve stopped at are – they’re chemical. It’s a biochemistry set of variables. They’re non-mechanical, so they’re not looking at the structural influences; they’re looking at things like VO2 Max – things that are easily measured. So it’s like – the intensity. Intensity is so easy to measure, and we like to give tools, easy tools for people to measure. And it’s a lot harder for someone to measure their weight bearing status, but you can see when you’re working hard you can feel it, you can see it drip off your forehead: there went hard work!
DANI: Mm.
KATY: So again – it just has to do with a reduction that’s not very specific. And again, it’s changing in academia, it’s just not trickling down to Shape magazine, right? Or, like, it’s –
DANI: Well, yeah, but even I –
KATY: It’s too cultural.
DANI: I saw an IMAX thing on NASA and the space station. And it was really cool. And they talk about how the lower – how when you’re in space you start to lose bone density.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
DANI: And their way of counteracting this was, they said, we need to have the astronauts exercise, and so they had them on a reclining – you know, a recumbent, stationary bike. And I just remember thinking, well, how’s that – does – is that giving them cardio, but what’s it really doing – would it be doing anything? I mean, I’m clearly no rocket scientist.
KATY: It’s not doing – it’s not working. But now, this is the first time they’re actually – they’re actually studying the cellular effects of gravity right now. This is the first time it’s ever happened at NASA, because it was only a couple years ago that they recognized that cells felt gravity. What!? So it’s just now starting. So this is all going to be – we are going to be so outdated in like 25 years from now. But yes, I – this is the problem. You have ideas that are perpetuated, because everyone’s trained in exactly the same way, you know? So all these new discoveries this year: the brain has a lymphatic system, cells feel gravity, etc., they’re from, like, really amazing, qualified, educated PhDs in their field who are like – oh, we just happened to do something a little bit different this time. Because the techniques that you are trained in and how to dissect something for how to look at it are all exactly the same, and it turned out because this guy did a different cut of the brain he was able to see a tube that the method for dissecting a brain – which everyone is trained in in college, just did it the same exact way – and no one ever saw this tube because the angle which they always cut it broke the tube. And it was only because of a fluke of someone cutting it slightly different – someone going out of the box and doing something non-mainstream that they were able to make a discovery. This is how it goes, that’s fine. Everyone at NASA, you know, they’re still – they, too, are looking at intensity and cardio because that is how it is taught at the academic level in exercise physiology. But then you have someone who is trained not in exercise – you want an exercise physiologist to be doing your exercise physiology experiments, but then you have a biophysicist, who is like, oh, hold up, did you guys add, like, this force there? And the exercise physiologist who is not a physicist is like, yeah, we don’t do forces. And then this guy’s like, well maybe – or this lady – is like, maybe add this in, and then all of a sudden it’s like, oh, yeah, because we have force-free models. It’s just – this is just the state of the scientific community right now, is it’s not very multi-disciplinarian, but it is starting to assemble. So anyway, all that to say that recumbent cycling in space is not maintaining their bones any better than recumbent cycling down here on the planet. It’s – they’re both a really good way to see a decreased lumbar spine and femoral bone density.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: So what else.
DANI: Hey, speaking of things that hang around in space, can we talk about man junk some more? Little bit? Like, about seats?
KATY: Would it actually hang in space, or would it just float around?
DANI: I think it depends on – I think it depends on the mood and the person –
KATY: O.M.G., that is the best visual right now. Man junk in space. (sound effects like Muppets’ Pigs In Space) Man junk in spaaaace!
DANI: Let’s talk about seats and man junk, because you said we’d talk a little bit about pressure.
KATY: Gosh, I thought I talked about them this show, but I was actually on Doctor Perry’s Stop Chasing Pain show, and when we were in Amsterdam – you know, all the RES went over –
DANI: You mean The Holland?
KATY: When we were in The Holland, we went to Amsterdam Body Worlds exhibit, so like, all these – imagine all these RES teachers, my entire staff of people, because we did a certification week there, we hung out on our last day, and we went in to The Holland, and we went into the Body World –
DANI: You’re so lucky.
KATY: Yeah, I know. And I’ve talked – I’ve seen it before –
DANI: Oh!
KATY: Um, but this – I hadn’t seen it in years, and I didn’t have – like, I had all my anatomy geeks with me, and it was cool. But there was a – so for those of you who don’t know, it’s plasticized body parts, so like you’ll have a human – it’s a human who donated their body to science and – hopefully – and it’s supposed to be – and it’s a thing. It’s a thing. I mean, it’s not – but anyway, it’s Body Worlds – I’m getting off on a sidebar. Anyway – there was –
DANI: Go back to man junk.
KATY: Man – I know, where did I get off base here?
DANI: (laughs)
KATY: This model – this person – has been stripped down. So you see its bones, its muscles, and you can see his – you don’t actually see it – do they leave something on the penis? You can see testicles and all the tubing, right? And so they put these bodies in real-life situations, so I don’t know – it was like 4 people stripped down to their tubes and muscles and ligaments and stuff playing cards. So they’re sitting in chairs, and the only way that this body could sit in a chair – this male body – without smashing his junk between the chair is by tucking his pelvis.
DANI: Wow!
KATY: So – it just made me think, holy crap. You know, like, men have this – we have tighter hamstrings, da da da da da – it’s like, but if you have, you know – men and women who have been sitting in chairs equally, where the natural tendency is to – the natural tendency is going to be always to take the pressure off the junk, right? So you’re going to tuck your pelvis so that the pressure doesn’t trap your junk between your body weight and the seat that you’re sitting on. It’s like why squatting as a resting position makes so much more sense, because you’re not putting pressure on all of your goodies. And so anyway, just sitting right there, I’m like, oh, there’s no other possible way to sit than to have a tucked pelvis if you’re sitting in a chair. Because if not, you’re going to just smash the crap out of all your good stuff, and I don’t think that your body would even allow you to do that. It’s kind of like, my kids rarely have clothes on, and my son was sliding down the front – you know, he climbs up on the front of the car, he tries all these different challenges to climb up the front of the car, and he slides down the front, and he was doing it to someone else’s car, and all I could see with his cute little dingle-dangle stuff was getting caught in the grill as he was going down. Like, I just kept imagining that, and I was telling my husband as we were standing there watching, like, all I can see is like, his penis and his balls just going into that grill and him like, sliding down and ripping them off. And he was like, that would never happen. Your reflexes around this area are so fast – like, at the least sensation of feeling anything you just – (makes noise) – back away and move around. You’re so adept at – humans would not be around very long if they ripped their penises off, you know? The human species would be done for if it was that easy to maim yourself going up and down trees and sliding around without clothes on, so.
DANI: I suppose. I suppose.
KATY: Yeah so – tucking I think – let me just finish this. Tucking is a real natural reflex to protect your junk.
DANI: Okay, that was my question.
KATY: Yeah, see, I answered it. Let’s see if I can keep answering your questions before I ask them. Blue!
DANI: What is the color of the sky! Oh, my gosh! You’re crazy, man.
KATY: Ah!
DANI: And those seats that have the cutouts, that’s not really a solution; it’s just a different variable? Or –
KATY: Well, I mean – it is a solution, right? It allows you to not have to really tuck your pelvis, but at the same time, it just changes the location of the pressure, right? You’re actually increasing the pressure to that area by doing that. Like, so – it’s a physics thing. So you can sit on a chair; let’s say that you are untucked, and now your weight is smashing – smashing! – your balls and your penis right between your body weight and the seat. So you’re like, oh my god, I’m going to get a cutout here. So you cut the hole out. Now everything can drop down into that area, but now the pressure is a ring around those things. So you’re just transferring that load to the ring around those things – you’re still pushing on the tubes and the hoses and affecting the flow to those areas and whatnot. So it’s more comfortable, but all you’ve done is change the location of the pressure, which would be different if you had no pressure there at all.
DANI: Ring around the hosey, hm?
KATY: Oh, come on. Did you have that in your back pocket, or did you just like?
DANI: Nope, it just popped out.
KATY: Genius. Pure genius. It just popped out?
DANI: I don’t keep things like that in my back pocket, thank you very much. Okay, I’m not going to make us degenerate here. What are some ways that we could supplement a cycling-heavy movement diet? Because people that love to cycle, they just – they love it. You know that.
KATY: They do.
DANI: Do you see it?
KATY: I just want to say – I totally get that you love your bike, everyone out there. And all I would ask – for you – those of you who are out there loving your bike – is that everyone loves their something. I love the things that I love – so I think that people get frustrated with other people for not doing things the way that they want to do it, and it always boils down to you just love the things that you do, the end. So if you’re feeling frustrated about why someone else won’t just stop smoking, or why someone won’t just – because we love the things that we love. And then there’s also something a little bit more – I think there’s something deeper to it is we’ve adapted to the things that we do, so taking them away, like they are – they are supporting our current version of our body. So you have to be transitioning to something, and have lots of steps along the transition. So anyway, let’s say that – let’s say that you love the act of cycling. I thought the best way that I could answer how to make cycling more nutritious was by grabbing a bunch of questions off of Facebook, because I realized that everyone was asking like a different version of the questions.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: So I thought, well, instead of me trying to figure out all the different ways, I’m just going to answer some questions. So the first one was, um, if walking to work is too far – 10 miles – but cycling isn’t, is a bicycle a better option than a car? So – all – the answers to everything is: it depends. It depends on, like, from what angle. Cycling is much better for the planet than – you know, it doesn’t take fuel. You are moving, there are all these benefits to movement that you can get, so in that way I would say, yes. Although – who is asking this question? If someone is dealing with a psoas tendinitis, or low bone density in the hips, and then getting to work would only take 6 minutes of sitting vs. an hour –
DANI: Right.
KATY: Like, you have to look at all the variables. So I really can’t answer any of these questions, but I think at least I can just flush out the thinking.
DANI: Okay.
KATY: You talked earlier about walking (ed: should be “biking”) being this, like, amazing transportation – it’s like a free transportation, it gets you outside. It doesn’t take fossil fuel. Walking does all those same things. I’m just saying. The only problem with walking is its slowness.
DANI: Right, I mean – yeah.
KATY: Which I’ll talk about in a second. And it doesn’t require cool gear. And you know, it’s, like – the cyclists that I know, that’s part of their identity, right? But you’re like, I have friends who we do this all together. It’s like your whole community. So –
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: I’m just going to assume that a lot of people asking are asking from that perspective of going, like, you don’t understand. I am my bike. Now how do I make it more nutritious?
DANI: Yeah.
KATY: So how does sitting on a bike affect pelvic floor health? Most people are concerned with chafing; you can buy pants and lotions for this, but not so concerned with the constant pressure on the pelvic floor. I just saw this for the first time at a male pelvic health presentation about cycling. I haven’t seen any papers, like, on cycling and pelvic floor disorder, but when you read the bodies of – like, the body of words – if you read the text of articles, you’ll see it listed as a risk factor quite often, so that there’s something happening. What is the exact mechanism: is it the pressure, the frequency, the lack of them doing other things, right? Because there’s no hip extension, meaning from – going beyond neutral. You’re missing a whole nutrient, like, butt muscle. Yes, you’re still using your glutes, but not in the same way that you would be doing something more natural, I would say, like, walking – over ground walking. And it goes on to affect the pelvic floor. So the parts of your body are not only the parts that you can list from an anatomy book but also the way that they are used, the forces that they are creating. So with something like cycling, which is an unnatural movement – it’s an unnatural way of using the body, and in an unnatural frequency or repetitiveness. You end up malnourished in certain mechanical nutrients, and you know, loaded hip extension would be one of them. And that’s part of, you know, the pelvic floor’s maintenance nutrients, if you will. That’s all I have to say about that. We have more pelvic floor stuff later. Spinning is huge – and by spinning I think she means aerobic cycling classes. Like, spinning is a brand.
DANI: Yeah, special bikes and stuff.
KATY: Yeah, I just –
DANI: Somebody yelling at you in the front of the class.
KATY: Yeah, but I think that there are – there are cycling classes, aerobics classes that are not called Spinning, so this is just for like, this stationary bike aerobics class. They’re huge. The body parts that are moving a lot in spinning and road biking are the legs, pumping like mad. Sometimes you stand up and pedal uphill and more parts are involved, but it’s mostly legs with upper body and arms being still. Can you talk about the cardiovascular benefit of biking and spinning classes, or are there better options? So is there a cardiovascular benefit? Sure. But in Move Your DNA – again, the state of your cardiovascular system – a healthy cardiovascular system has to do with what’s happening on the micro-level of capillaries. We’ve reduced it for easy measure to take your resting heart rate and your maximal heart rate, and your blood pressure. But none of those things speak to the actual function of the cardiovascular system, which is to deliver oxygen to all parts of your body. And the benefits of cardiovascular exercise are local to the parts that are working. So when you have large hunks of your body that aren’t moving, they are not benefitting from this reduced variable. You are creating areas with adaptations, and you have areas without. So if you have the adaptation, like, the measure is not the benefit. I’m going to break here for a second, just so I can – I’m just going to stop – I’m going to stop talking, so I can continue talking over here. I’m going to go over here. Can you hear me? There was a study about – did we talk about this? The grip? Death from all mortality – or I think it was death from all cardiovascular issues, and grip strength. So they went around to a load of people and measured all of their grip strength on a hand dynamometer. You grab it, you squeeze it, it shows the strength of your hand. And what they’ve found is people who had a stronger grip strength had a decreased risk of dying from a cardiovascular issue. Yeah – so if you read the paper, it’s like, all these people were better movers, you know, they’re people who did physical labor, who moved throughout the day, who were training in the gym, who were exercises. But the variable becomes grip strength. So now I read that article, and I’m like, this is amazing! I’m going to improve my grip strength to be protective against a stroke. So I buy a hand dynamometer – I buy the test – and I just sit and practice to the test. And then, I die, like everyone else, because I didn’t actually do the behaviors that resulted in a better cardiovascular – I didn’t do the behaviors that gave me the protectiveness against cardiovascular diseases, and also better hand strength. I just practiced the hand strength. So this is that same idea kind of with teaching, right? Where we’re teaching to the test – we’re not really teaching broad subjects where the breadth of learning and critical thinking is there. You’re just trying to present, basically, the information that’s going to be on the test so that you score well on the tests. And then you score well on the tests – but then it turns out that you don’t actually know that much beyond what was on the test. You didn’t necessarily learn how to think. So it’s kind of that same – it’s that same idea with cardiovascular exercise; we’re just – you know, we saw that people who did all sorts of – the original cardiovascular health came from oh, man, it’s slipping my head – they’re a trolley –
DANI: Oh, yeah, the conductors.
KATY: Yes, the conductors. Seated conductors on a trolley vs. –
DANI: Vs. standing.
KATY: Vs. the ticket takers, right?
DANI: Yeah.
KATY: I think there’s two jobs on a trolley, there’s the person sitting and the person taking tickets. So they work the same day, but they had more movement throughout the day. They did better on their cardiovascular test, so then everyone’s like, I’m going to do the – I’m going to pass this cardiovascular test so hard! Right? So you – you train for the test, but it was – that’s only because someone – some researcher pulled out the cardiovascular and said this is a test, not the fact that they had moved all day throughout the day, where the variable could very easily – the protective mechanism could very easily be the repetitive change in geometry or what we call movement. Not the result of doing that.
DANI: Okay.
KATY: Because it’s very easy like I said to fake a test, like if someone moves all day and has a particular cardiovascular outcome, and you hold up the cardiovascular outcome and someone says well, I don’t have time to do all day, but I learn how to basically bio hack this, where I can get my heart to perform on a test the same way that someone moved all day. And you’re like, see? See, I have my protective mechanism, and it’s like eh, turns out that even though the answers to the test were the same, the adaptations or the breadth of body knowledge that you have is different, and it was that body knowledge that resulted in the outcome. It’s like also our J-shaped spine episode, where it wasn’t the spine, it was the movements that resulted in the spine.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: Everyone’s trying to force their body into this spinal shape –
DANI: J-shape, yeah.
KATY: – and it’s like, no, turns out it was the muscles being used in a way that resulted in this shape that was protective. So that’s my end of speech on cardiovascular benefit.
DANI: A lot of just in the interest of time, a lot of people ask, like, I do this – what can I do? What’s the corrective, or whatever? If you could create a perfect diet for a cyclist, not to put you on the spot or anything –
KATY: No, but it’s – you know, it’s that same – I just put this in the Diastasis Recti book. My brother, who is a smoker, swears that he is undoing his smoking by running. He balances his smoking habit with running. And that’s a physiological validity to him. And I’m like, yeah, that’s not how it works. So. Keeping- with that spirit in mind, if you are a cyclist and I’m going to say cyclist with a Capital C – meaning, and I do no other types of movement: 1) you have to start moving in other ways. If you are cycling for exercise or if you are cycling for transportation, then try to – like, I have no problem with cycling for transportation. That’s awesome, that’s like, just dead time that you were sitting down and around, and it’s great and if it gets you outside more and it feels the wind – whatever. But pick a different mode of exercise, you know what I mean?
DANI: Mm-hmm.
KATY: But if you’re like, no, I am a cyclist and I train as a cyclist, then walk for transportation. Or you’re going to have to increase your walking time in other ways. There was someone who had kind of an interesting question which was – my partner wants to know, why is cycling so awesome? And basically corrective exercise so boring? And she was like, she was like, well it is more efficient – it is definitely more efficient – and so I was like, well, it depends on your definition of ‘efficient.’ This is kind of where this ‘stack your life’ idea comes from. Things can be efficient in the short term, but not necessarily in the long term. So if you’re like, hey, I’m going to use – I can get to work. So if someone says, walking’s too far, right? It’s 10 miles – my office is 10 miles away – I can be there in, I don’t know. How far – it takes you like 20 minutes max to cycle ten miles?
DANI: I have no idea.
KATY: I feel like I used to ride my beach cruiser maybe 5 miles – maybe like 40 minutes. I don’t know. Someone out there knows; it’s not me. But anyway, if you’re going to go to work and not get, like super sweaty where you’re not racing, it’s going to take you – I would say – under 30 minutes to ride 10 miles. But to walk 10 miles is going to take you 2 ½ hours – however, if you get to work and back in a fast amount of time, and then go well, I still need to get, you know, an hour and a half of walking in, I still have to do all of these phone calls, I still have to visit with this person – or like, there’s all these to-do lists, where if you just walked the 10 miles, you getting yourself to work would also get you 2 ½ hours of exercise. You would also be getting your walking nutrients. You could also be making phone calls during that entire time, you could be doing business. You could just be – I swear to God, I went walking the other day and took all those horrible phone calls that I make that have to do with changing my cell service – where you’re like, sitting on hold forever. Things that you put off because you just don’t want to be on the phone. Well, I did them on a 6 mile walk, and guess what? They weren’t – like this crazy, horrible thing for me to do. I was outside, it was no problem for me being on hold because I knew that when I was done, not only would I have walked but I would have taken care of those 3 tasks that I’ve been pushing off to the side for 3 ½ months. I call my grandma, because I feel like I have to, and walking is a really great way to, you know, touch base with her. She’s always tickled. You can meet a friend to walk a portion of it – you know, so that you’re getting this social time. So I just – efficiency, if you were racing to get somewhere fast so that you can then leave more time to do the other things that you could have also done during that period of time that you were racing through to get done fast, that’s not really efficient.
DANI: Right.
KATY: What’s most efficient would be to do the walk, and all of the other things that you needed to do on your task list at the same time. That’s going to be most efficient. And it would actually be better for your body; you would actually be doing many things. As far as the boredom factor, I think that that’s psychological preference, you know? It’s – I don’t know. You could listen to Ben’s podcast. Ben’s not bored.
DANI: No.
KATY: Walking 500 miles a month or whatever he’s doing. He’s like, he’s like learning about his community. He’s like, in school, he’s educating himself – all these things are happening during his walking. So boredom is a mindset.
DANI: Right.
KATY: I don’t think you could say that an activity is boring as much as you are bored by something. What else? Oh, can I do one more?
DANI: Sure.
KATY: I think I’d like my children to know how to ride a bike as a form of public transportation where I live, which is cool – don’t worry, we also walk a lot. I see children as old as 2 or 3 on bikes, but I remember getting mine around 5. Does it matter how early they start? Are there developmental changes to wait for in the body while also ensuring that they also have many varied types of movement – at the park, jungle gym, and lots of walking as well. So this is someone – I feel like this person – I feel like you already know the answer to this.
DANI: I want to say they answered their own question.
KATY: Yeah. But it’s the same – I would highly recommend that everyone start their child on a strider bike and ditch the training wheels altogether. One of the great benefits of cycling is the balance and the motor skill of it all. So we – like, I started riding a bike around 5. When did you ride a bike?
DANI: I think about 5 or 6, yeah.
KATY: So that was, I remember –
DANI: They didn’t have strider bikes way back then.
KATY: No. Or at least they didn’t have them in America.
DANI: And those are just – if you don’t know – those are bikes without pedals.
KATY: Yes.
DANI: They call them balance bikes, or – yeah.
KATY: Right. So we got our bike, right? We got our shiny bike, kind of big for us, but it had these big wheels on it, so the first skill that you learned was pedaling, right? Super easy. And then you had to then, all of a sudden, one day, when you’re like, this is it – we’re taking these off – you would have to learn balance, which is a much more challenging skill. So in one way, it makes sense – you do the easy stuff first, and then you start with the harder stuff second. Kind of like, we’re going to teach you your letters first, and then we’re going to teach you words second. But it turns out that we actually start working on our letters and our sounds by talking, so by the time you start learning how to read, you’ve been talking for a long time. And so someone – I believe the first strider bike was made in Germany, where it’s a frame with two wheels and no pedals. So your feet are on the ground. So your first skill that you learn is balance, which is super easy when your feet reach the ground and when you’re very close to the ground. You know, your center of mass is very low – and they get – I’ve got all this great video of my son and, like, he would just stride, long legs – so your legs are straight, not sitting with flexed hips and flexed knees. Your