If you’ve ever suspected that you have significantly greater thoracic kyphosis than the average mountain biker, turns out you’re correct. Scientists studying how cycling affects the shape of a person’s spine have found that road cyclists tend to be a bit more hunch-backed.
The study, published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine, took 30 road cyclists, 30 mountain bikers and 30 non-cyclists and measured their posture with a spinal mouse. A spinal mouse is not some sort of highly-trained medical rodent, but more like a computer mouse which is run up a person’s spine to measure bodily contours.
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It seems the road cycling posture, which was “characterised by greater lumbar flexion and more significant anterior pelvic tilt and trunk inclination compared with the mountain biking posture,” was more likely to leave people a little hunched over in the upper part of the spine.
But it’s not all bad news for roadies. The study also looked at hamstring muscle extensibility and found: “Road cyclists had significantly greater hamstring muscle extensibility in the active knee extension test, and showed greater anterior pelvic tilt and trunk inclination capacity in the sit-and-reach test, compared with mountain bikers and non-cyclists.”
6 thoughts on “Mountain bikers have better posture than roadies according to study”
“greater anterior pelvic tilt
“greater anterior pelvic tilt and trunk inclination capacity in the sit-and-reach test …”
excellent! that’s the only reason i took up road cycling in the first place…
bigshape wrote:
Yes: I don’t think enough people are concerned about the state of their anterior pelvic tilt 🙂 And don’t get me started on my trunk inclination capacity.
Wow. A sample size of 90.
Wow. A sample size of 90. They must be onto something!
Though actually nothing they have said is actually that surprising. If you spoke to a physiologist about what they would expect to see for a cyclist anterior pelvic tilt would be up there, and this tends to cause upstream problems which do manifest themselves in the thoracic spine.
My greater anterior pelvic
My greater anterior pelvic tilt and trunk inclination capacity is exactly what my wife sees in me.
Easy answer to the problem…
Easy answer to the problem……ride both mountain and road, I have for years…Feck I must be awsome without knowing it……NOT…….
No surprise to me that being
No surprise to me that being hunched over for long periods will, over the long term, give you a hunch. One reason I like to mix it up with MB & recumbents.