Here at road.cc we’ll merrily confess to being behind the times when it comes to fitness classes, so water biking was a new one on us. It’s fairly straightforward. It’s riding an exercise bike in water.
As with so many of these things, the activity’s fundamental ridiculousness is explained away in this video with a host of pseudo-scientific sounding benefits that may or may not stand up to scrutiny. We wouldn’t profess to be experts in lymphatic drainage, for example.
We would however support WaterBiking Studio’s claim that this is a low impact activity. Common-or-garden cycling is low impact anyway, isn’t it? (Provided you don’t fall off.) We see no reason why doing it part-submerged would change that.
As was intimated above, we had a strong suspicion that water biking might have been around for a while without our picking up on it – and so it proved.
The video’s assertion that it is the latest fitness trend “from Europe” led us to discover that it came to prominence in 2011 after being popularised by a Frenchman called Alain Lellouche.
It seems to be known as ‘hydrospinning’ in the UK and Pippa Middleton wrote an article about it for The Telegraph.
In that piece – entitled “the l’eaudown on hydro-spinning” – Pippa describes “cycling in a Jacuzzi,” which seems rather different to the group class seen in the video. The place she went to also had duo cubicles where couples could hydro-spin together. Ahh, how romantic.
As for what Pippa was hoping to get out of the experience, she wrote: “Spinning fast in water while being blasted by hydro-massage jets helps reshape the fat tissue on calves, thighs and buttocks, replacing it with (I hope) lean and shapely leather-trouser appropriate muscles.”
Pippa did 15km in 45 minutes. We’ve no real clue whether this is any good or not. All we know is that Homar Leuci managed to do 855m with his head under.
7 thoughts on “Video: Water biking – a fitness craze that rather passed us by”
Reminds me that whenever you
Reminds me that whenever you see reports of flooding, behind the reporter there will always be a bloke on a bike riding through the flood, knee deep or higher, getting where he needs to go, cars floating past…
This sound ideal for all
This is the first rational argument for leaving the EU I’ve heard. Certainly better than the bendy bananas one that still apparently has currency in some circles.
Unfortunately, that’s usually also the bloke who rides along every other day of the year with a chain that is bright orange with advanced rust, squeaking like some kind of exotic jungle bird, and with brakes worn down to nothing. The day when it floods is the only time his bike works at its optimum.
Not so good for your bearings
Not so good for your bearings. lol
I’m up for anything that
I’m up for anything that helps my lymphatic drainage.
Seriously, this was as a
Seriously, this was as a training method by one of the Soviet bloc countries in the cold war period, (I think either East Germany of the Soviet Union). We were told this by the legendary coach Harold “H” Nelson at a training weekend in the mid-1980s.
They were then all-conquering in the “amateur” ranks, largely due to their scientific training methods (which included plenty of performance enhancing drugs).
Yes this was one of the
Yes this was one of the activities on offer at an “all-inclusive” German resort in the Red Sea. Oddly, even though “all inclusive” included almost everything else (such as 24 hour free alchohol), the hydro spinning was extra, so we didn’t try it out. I’m sure that my lymphatic drainage has suffered as a result. Not.
It would be good if you could
It would be good if you could bring along your laundry and chuck that in at the same time – two birds, one stone…