Just as a point of reference here…
Being a former Olympic road racing cyclist, I’d just like to stick up a hand in defence of cycling as a means of body fat reduction.
Somebody mentioned earlier that swimming is just about as good an endurance exercise as there is - with the exception of running.
Well, I dunno about that. When I was at the peak of my sport, circa 1984-1988, I used to know a lot of world famous swimmers at the time, and generally, we “roadies” had a lower body fat percentage than the Olympic swimmers. Not by much, but it was enough for the swimmers to constantly marvel at how lean us “roadies” were. Indeed, at the height of our annual season, it was quite common for the veins in our thighs to be exposed all over like the veins on a race horse. To do such a thing, you’re talking about exceptionally low heart rates and body fat percentage.
You’re talking about a resting heart rate of less than 40 beats per minute, and a body fat percentage of less than 8% - which is getting really low. If memory serves me correctly, if we started getting as low as 6% body fat, we would be advised to start eating rich fatty foods for a while because at those levels, your immune system was extremely exposed - the slightest bug and it would wipe you out for a fortnite.
But getting back to the swimmers? The one thing they used to ask us “roadies” all the time was “how do you get so lean”? And we’d reply with something like, “Oh simple really… just do 5 hours a day on the bike - minimum. 7 hours on the hard days…”
And their jaws would drop. You see, the swimmers would resign themselves to the following simple reality about swimming. To quote my friend, 1988 200m Freestyle champion Duncan Armstrong… “Man, there’s no way we could do 6 hours a day in the pool… that’d be like sticking your head in a bucket of water and gargling for 6 hours while you stare at a black line… at least you guys get to see the country side!”
Which is not to say that Duncan Armstrong didn’t train 6 hours a day or more to beat the legendary Matt Biondi - indeed he did. But a lot of it was outside of the pool - doing gym work and cross training and specific resistance motions etc. His point was that to do 6 hours of SWIMMING alone would have been deathly boring, but with cycling, you can do up to 6 hours in the beautiful countryside and really enjoy every second of it.
Anyway, in closing, my point is this. Lance Armstrong attempts his 5th Tour de France win shortly - about 3 weeks away I believe. As you watch le Tour each night on the telly, just make a point of checking out incredibly lean the competitors are. I’m pretty safe in saying that professional road racing cyclists are the leanest human beings (overall) of any sporting discipline - rivalled perhaps only by Olympic long distance runners. But even then, the cyclists generally have superior muscularity in my opinion. Olympic long distance runners tend to be very scrawny, at a physical level - in my opinion. Put it this way, you wouldn’t see too many Kenyan marathon runners in the NFL would you? But if you check out Lance Armstrong for example, he’s astonishingly lean, no question - but also, without too much effort he could also be built like a good boxer if you know what I mean. A really top flight pro road racer has to have amazing bike handling skills - which requires some pretty strong shoulder isometric strength. Not up to swimmer standard, but significant nonetheless.
). Offhand, I’d say that Epimetheus conceded that one.