I've been having a slight knee problem, nothing major, but every time it starts feeling better I overdo it slightly and take one step back after two steps forward.

So, I was thinking, how could I take it especially easy on my knee, but at the same time keep up with my cardio? At the gym they have handcycling exercise equipment, so I gave it a try. Long story, short...I can adjust the torque required to turn the crank, just like shifting gears on a bike.

After just 15-minutes at level 5 I cycled ~3-miles at an average of about 60-RPM. At the end my arms were pumped and I lift weights, but they were tired and level 5 isn't very tough resistance, it was a total cardio workout with my HR averaging about 120-130 BPM. Now I spend about 45-minutes handcycling, in 15-minute increments, I usually start out at level 5 and work up.

So it got me thinking, this has got to be helping increase the vascular function of my upper body by widening and making more flexible the blood vessels. And, in return, shouldn't this increase my overall cardio fitness?





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Yes. Anything that raises your heart rate helps.

I wasn't focusing simply on heart rate, rather I was more focused on increasing flexibility and widening blood vessels in the upper body, which remain so after the exercise (after a period of time doing said exercise), just like a cyclist's blood vessels in the legs are more flexible and wider than most people.




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Any exercise that gets your HR up will help your overall cardiovascular health as well as your heart. Since your arm muscles aren't your leg muscles, the handcycling will be concentrating the benefits to making improvements to the blood vessels in your arms.

Yes, after doing handcycling for over a week now, I'm well aware it is definitely a cardio exercise that gets the HR up.

What I'm wondering is if this activity, overtime, can reduce one's blood pressure, since it will widen and make more flexible the blood vessels in the upper body. Seems like with larger blood vessels in an area that doesn't normally receive cardio exercise that this should lower one's blood pressure, albeit, probably by a minimal amount.

I took my blood pressure after doing an hour of handcycling and it was 102/60 and little lower than normal. However, when I take my BP after cycling it can go as low as 85/55. (I know these numbers after exercise are only because my blood vessels are at an abnormal expansion, compared to normal and the BP goes up to one's normal level overtime).

If nothing else, my arms should look tight and toned like my legs, unlike the twigs many cyclists carry around

Cardio exercise should help you lower your blood pressure. But if you've been regularly riding your bike for quite a while, then I doubt you get any significant drop just by changing the type of cardio you do. But who knows. I'm sure the results either of us would find is just circumstantial.

Not sure what the point is to know blood pressure just after exercise. But I suppose if power output is equal for the same amount of time then maybe you can say something is better or worse.

In addition to everything else,
Eat your beets.
Lower your cholesterol.
(the generic 'you' of course.)

b6 & b12

No doubt nutrition is a big deal, but it's not the end-all-be-all. Take in all the protein required by the body, but the fact is you start losing muscle mass after the age of ~30, without strength training, regardless of one's diet.

The same thing happens with the arteries. You want flexible and wider blood vessels you need to do cardio. The most healthy diet alone won't work.

However, WRT nutrients, I do eat a lot of stuff I grow out of my yard and I'm thinking of getting chickens to supplement my diet even more.

One of my favorite plants is the Moringa Tree.

If you increase the capacity/volume of upper body blood vessels, do you run the risk of stealing blood from the lower body?

I think the lower body always has an excess due to gravity

I'm sorry - but there are many other factors contributing to blood vessel health more than using muscles in a particular limb.

Tracking your overall "volume of aerobic activity" is as good as any possible metric that could be associated with blood vessel health. But in reality, hormonal, genetic, dietary and hematological factors significant bearings on systemic circulatory health, including the arms or legs.

Anyway - keep at it.

That's an interesting question. I guess the premise being that if your upper body blood vessels are made to be more flexible and wider that blood flow would increase to the upper body during cycling as the heart rate increases, thereby taking away more blood from the legs.

That would be an interesting research study. My thoughts are, even if there is a slight decrease in my cycling performance and I do think it would be very slight, if at all, then I'm willing to take that as a trade off for having overall lower blood pressure in general -- after all, no one pays me to cycle.

I'm sure professional cyclists would have a different opinion.

Cardio is cardio. This past RAMROD (154 miles, 9500') had a hand cyclist who finished, first that I've seen. His upper body and arms were not particularly large, I guess similar to top cyclists whose legs are not huge. In any case, one of the things which we get from aerobic training is increased blood volume, actually plasma volume IIRC. The more, the better. Left ventricle wall thickness also goes up, hence increased ejection fraction. It's all good. Upper body activity does not decrease lower body blood flow. The purpose of blood is to move oxygen and nutrients to where they are needed. And that's what it does. Your body does what it's trained to do, pretty cool.

That said, training your arms instead of your legs won't improve muscular function in your legs. Muscles do the minimum they need to do. Efficiency has been a big part of survival. And that said, more red blood cells will be welcomed as will improved lung and heart function.

My vet uses Lazer therapy to stimulate blood flow to promote healing. You may want to do an interweb search on Lazer therapy wand or something similar. You will need special glasses to avoid seeing the light, because it could cause blindness.

FIFY...
If the issue is the knee, why would going anywhere else be the 'solution' /remedy ?
"but every time it starts feeling better I overdo it slightly and take one step back after two steps forward"
a resolution for an eye irritation is not a poke in the eye...
better to determine what is causing the problem,
your seat placement exacerbating the knee?
foot on the pedal, rotation issue?
too big a gear for an old farte?
sudden injury which is now exacerabated by stress of hard pedal strokes ? - they happen...
cardio is not an answer for mechanical injury...

working on lighter gears and smoother pedal stroke often help to resolve the injury, by reducing the causative stress, and also makes it less likely to cuase further injuries down the road.
side effect is more efficient pedaling and opportunity to build more 'power' down the road.
This happens to be a good time to do that in the No. Hemispshere....
... is this thread about something else...?
Ride On
Yuri

I'm simply giving my knee a rest, it's not like I'm working on my upper body and hopes that fixes my knee.

I've been cycling as my primary form of transportation to work since the mid 80's. I was married with 3 children and we were a single-car family. We didn't become a 2-car family until 2018 and that's when the kids were long gone. I only need the second vehicle (pick-up) for work I do hauling stuff, otherwise I'm still on the bike.

What good is spinning at a lower gear going to do me? Virtually nothing, I'd rather work the upper body, which is much more of an aerobic exercise than something that my body has tons of miles doing. When I get done handcycling, my arms are pumped and I'm much more worn out in just 15-minutes of this exercise. That tells me I'm doing something that is a real benefit.

I'll keep to strength training with the lower body to heal the knee, it's much better than doing something at a level that bores me, since I've been doing it for about 40-years.

Open your horizons and do something new



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The knees (and other joints) can benefit by load-bearing and strength exercises, of couse. (So long as it's not injurious levels of exercise on those areas.) That said ...

I've found hand-oriented cardio like a "hand cycle" can work (ie, SciFit's variation). If the intensity's sufficient for a cardio response. There are gym type cycle equipment that also has arms, which allows a basic seated cycling position with cranks and arm levers. Rowing is also a low-impact, low-strength way to boost cardio while keeping a minimum load on the knees. It requiures movement of the knees, yes, but the seating position and motion (on rails) keeps pressures to a minimum. And there's swimming. Any of these can be done in such a manner as to induce a range of cardio challenge.

If winging it, not in a gym with such equipment, there's always brisk "ruck" marches along local trails. If you've got hills in your area, and if you can walk ~5mi of distance, a weighted day pack or ruck sack and brisk speed can yield surprising cardio benefit. Wouldn't be any more injurious than walking, assuming no injuries (or even inflamed/weakened joints) to cope with.


There is also a exercise "circuit" approach. Focusing on "floor" exercises, it's surprising how a combination (if done briskly enough) can yield a solid cardio impact. And most of these won't be impactful on bum knee, elbow, shoulder joints (depending on the exercises selected). Some example exercises and ideas for "circuit" combinations of them:

https://darebee.com/workout/types/cardio.html

Or eat your oatmeal.

I've eaten an average of one tall canister of oatmeal per week for about 40 years. Started eating it out of bachelor laziness and got addicted to it.

And (coincidentally or otherwise) I'm the only one among the people I know who isn't on some form of meds and doesn't visit a doctor more than once every few years.

Might be genetics, might be all the cycling, but the oatmeal doesn't hurt.

Beets in a jar are easy, too, so maybe I'll try those.

I took a few days off my handcycling, because it was getting a little stale. I've been doing the typical strength training and other cardio and rounded my cardio up yesterday with a Norwegian 4x4 on the Arc Trainer. Kicked my ass -- I slept good last night

I decided to do easy cardio today on the handcycle and it was not stale. Good workout. I did 30-minutes @ level 5 averaging ~60 RPM; then 15-minutes @ level 7 averaging ~45 - 50 RPM; then 15-minutes @ level 5 averaging ~45 - 50 RPM, with a three max efforts thrown in for about 20 - 30 seconds each.

What's interesting is that my HR was averaging about 130 BPM, which is an easy aerobic activity and if I rode my bike at this HR level I would nearly fall asleep. However, on the handcycling machine it was difficult to maintain, not that my muscles were sore, since I've been lifting weights for years, rather it was a total cardio event where when I stopped my arms were pumped like crazy. I won't be sore tomorrow, so it's not a muscular thing happening here.

This tells me that the blood vessels in my arms/upper body are not as flexible and wide as they could/should be; furthermore, it tells me that I'm also building new blood vessels. And on top of that, I must be building more mitochondria.




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another thread sorta all over the place. .
at least nicely.

When hard into the cardio cave - does gravity and the increased musculature requirement suck blood from my brain? - resulting in ...uh, ... uh, ..... I forget, nevermind, .

Handcycling would be good for me. and a better indoor trainer, too. (we can wish - it's almost xmas)

My randomly relevant contribution (besides the beets and cholesterol) would be = When hand cycling wear gloves. But which ones? How much padding? As a cyclist with skinny arms - I think minimalistic with no flashy colors or logos, least not at the gym. And a tight-fitting handcycling jersey - to avoid cotton t-shirt underarm rash. Do I start in a shoulder over spindle position (SOPS) and how much elbow extension and what q-factor? I have an old tennis elbow injury, ...

Back to the 75+ thread. Safer.