LittleBigMan

With all the hoopla associated with cycling and impotence, it's interesting to note that inability to maintain an erection is often associated with heart attacks. The most common causes of impotence are arteriosclerosis and diabetes, both of which are associated with poor diet and lack of exercise.

So if anyone ever tries to tell you your bicycle will give you impotence, tell them your bicycle will help prevent it. (Remember, we're all in this together--I'm pulling for ya.)

geog_dash

That's consistent with articles I've read that assert the impotence rate among cyclists is no greater than for the population as a whole. Combine that with the number of cyclists riding with bad posture on badly shaped saddles on ill-fitting bikes ...

noisebeam

Does anyone know if there is any data in regard to infertility (not impotence) and cycling?
Al

slagjumper

I don’t know about all of the hype. I've even heard that ED affects 10-30 % of American men and a huge part of it is psychological.

Not to be overly insensitive, but if you get a stiffy at night, but have troubles when in comes down to it, perhaps you should stop swilling before your 16th beer.

scarry

Only ass-hatchets squash the G-spot. Get on a recumbent and save your taint.

banerjek

I tell 'em they should be more worried about the guys who drive compensation vehicles.....

ItsJustMe

I don't know what the recumbent crowd is even talking about. I have never had any discomfort riding a normal saddle, even if I'm wearing jeans and going 20 or more miles at a stretch. I've never been in the saddle for more than 2.5 hours at a time, but those times were before I had any cycling clothing, I was just wearing street stuff.

I wonder whether the recumbent guys who are always going on about how horrible diamond frames are ever had a properly fit saddle, adjusted correctly.

scarry

I sure did, but after many many years and miles on that blasted thing, I got wise.
To be honest, the saddle was not uncomfortable when I was younger, but after so long, those pressure points get tired.

Of course I ride century's all the time. It was always after about 4 hours that the seat became a pain.
Now I can be comfortable till the very end, even if that is 10 hours.

sbhikes

Not everyone is made the same. I've found comfortable saddles, but there is no way to negate the fact that there is pressure being applied to a relatively small area.

Nevertheless, discomfort with diamond frame bikes isn't the best or only reason to get a recumbent. Recumbents are fun and there are so many different kinds you'll never get tired of trying them all. Unless you just don't like them, which is fine, too. Chipcom doesn't like them, but at least he tried them.

chipcom 

I just tell em that you ain't supposed be be sitting on your johnson.

(I'll pass on the pulling, but thanks for the thought)

chipcom 

Well, humans are all unique, some of us are built to straddle a saddle, others are built to sit in a seat.

chipcom 

I never said they weren't fun...just for me an upright is more fun. I always preferred riding my horses rather than sitting in a buggy too...no offense, but to me a bent was more like being in a sulky than astride in the saddle.

John E

All WHAT hoopla? This is very old news, which resurfaces periodically, only to be disproven and discredited repeatedly. Sitting on a conventional bicycle seat adversely affects SOME men SOME of the time, and one can minimize the damage through proper saddle selection and proper bike set-up (this includes everything from handlebar height to stem reach to saddle tilt and fore-aft adjustment). Sheldon Brown has a good article on this.

I have experienced perineal discomfort with only one bicycle seat I have owned, a narrow padded Marin. Back when men were men, bikes had friction shifters, and saddles were tensioned leather affairs, no one complained about impotence. Indexed shifting obviously causes impotence.

supcom

How many miles does it take?? I ride at least one century a month and have moved up to 200K brevets. This effect of sore rear, loss of feeling, and/or numbness where man wants no numbness is unknown to me. Of course, the saddle I straddle is a Brooks...

John E

Yup, that's the secret many of us discovered long ago.

supcom

Raising the handlebars up near the height of the saddle does this pretty well.

Portis

Yeah, cuz chics really dig guys that look like this. This guy makes the 40 yr. old virgin's original bike look cool.

sbhikes

Don't I look cute on mine? (See my avatar.)

galen_52657

Unfortunately, you can't climb a 20% grade or jump stuff on a recumbent...

sbhikes

I'll grant you the jump stuff part (although I've gotten some air over bumps) but I can climb almost anything on my recumbent. I can go 0 miles an hour up a hill if I want, or any tiny increment over that. I can also whip around a corner and get it up on 2 wheels. A diamond frame and a two wheel recumbent can't do that because they only have 2 wheels.

By perpetuating negative sterotypes about recumbents you're shutting yourself off from experiencing something new and fun. There's no reason you can't ride as many kinds of bicycle and tricycle as you want. I do. I have 3 kinds right now. Maybe someday I'll get an off-road delta trike with a differential so that both rear wheels are drive wheels.

Cyclist0094

I thought ED stood for (campy)ERGO disfunction. I have been riding a long time and the plumbing still works. As mentioned before though the right saddle is the key to longevity . That goes for bicycles too.

Dchiefransom

Is that Type II diabetes, or Type I diabetes?

2wheeledsoul

I tell 'em they're full of it, to spare me the lame assed excuses, grow some balls and get on a bike.

2wheeledsoul

Wow, that's some pretty harsh bashing on recumbents going on here! It's bad enough that there's a mobility war of attrition going on, with cagers trying to run bikes off the road and even killing riders, but must riders run other riders off because the bike has a radical design? Or even a traditional design? That's ****ed up, people! A house devided will not stand.
Personally, I think bents are pretty sleek, like a chopper without the noisy engine, and not dorky at all. Sure there's some disadvantages, but that goes for either design. Mount your chosen steed and enjoy it for what it is.

Sorry for the hijack...

ItsJustMe

I'm vaguely interested in recumbents, but I want one where I can still see over the top of most traffic. I haven't seen one with a periscope yet.

Also the roads I ride on are very rough; typically washboarded gravel, bridges that should have been rebuilt decades ago (really, literally, nothing but patches, no original road left). Over parts of my ride, I slow down a lot and do a lot of emergency steering to whip several feet to one side and another to avoid horrendous series of washboarded holes that seem to alternate positions on the road.

Sometimes it's entirely impossible to miss the holes; then I want to go up on legs so they can take the shock rather than my body.

Seems like for that I really want a high center of gravity. Having never ridden a recumbent, I can't say for sure but it seems like if they were good at fast manuvering you'd see them on the off-road trails.