|
Most athletes are dedicated to their sports, but few so
vehemently as our over-exercised, over-the-top editors:
Cycling: Two Wheels is the Real Deal
Cycling is the best aerobic sport, period. You can ride a hundred
miles or 500 miles without
impact stress on your knees, ankles, and hips. And you cover a
lot of ground: Ride an hour for fitness, 100 miles for a
challenge, across the country for the adventure of your life.
Cycling offers variety: Ride your road bike on pavement or your
mountain bike on trails. Ride alone or in a group. Spin on the
bike path or hammer up big climbs. Tour for a week or ride to
the corner bagel shop. Ride slow or race. No other sport offers
the variety of experiences that cyclists take for granted.
Bottom line: Cycling is fun because you can go fast and zoom
around corners. It makes you feel like a kid again. Not every
sport can knock 20 or 30 years off your body and your mind but
cycling can.
Swimming: To Splash is a Gas
You want low impact? And you want a sport that builds just about
every muscle in your body, not just your legs? Swimming is it.
Sure, cycling is low impact, until you crash. But there’s no
jarring or pounding in swimming, and none of the associated
injuries. It’s one of the best workouts around, and it’s
refreshing and invigorating. When you jump in the pool you’ll be
living the dream of every hot and sweaty runner and cyclist:
you’ve figured out something they haven’t. You can keep
swimming into those golden years, or while you’re pregnant too.
It’s cheap, and it’s fun!
Running: Fun in the Run
Real athletes know, just like the Greek
Olympians, that the truly great sport is running. Sure, it takes some
training, but once there, your daily workout is right out the door or
anywhere you’d like to take it such as a wooded trail. It’s the perfect
sport for travelers because all you need are shorts and shoes. And
running is ideal for time-strapped workers because in merely 30-minutes
you can fit in an awesome run. But the best reason running is tops is
the runners’ high you feel after a workout. No other sport brings with
it such emotional ecstasy for so little investment of time and energy.
Walking: Exercise for Everyone
Walking is the one truly
democratic physical activity. All you need is a decent pair of
shoes, and a tube of sunblock. If you walk fast, you’ll enjoy
all the cardiovascular benefits of aerobic exercise and burn
calories, too. Walking is low-impact, so it doesn’t beat you up
like running. It’s safer than cycling and you never have to
worry about flat tires. You don’t need to know a lot of
technique; and you don’t need to join a pool and work out on
someone else’s schedule instead of your own. Just put your shoes
on and get out the door.
Triathlons: Try A Little of Everything
"Which sport is best?" The answer, of course, is all of them. Triathlon,
in other words. (I’m not counting walking, a pleasant enough activity
but no more a sport than eating or breathing.) Look, every sport has its
pros and cons. Running: simple and accessible, but beats you up.
Swimming: low-impact and builds your upper body, but inconvenient and
takes longer to master than quantum mechanics. Cycling: fun and fast,
but scary and more costly than a roomful of personal-injury lawyers.
With triathlon, however, you partake of each discipline just enough to
reap the benefits, without paying the penalties. Plus, you won’t get
bored, suffer single-sport over-use injuries, or end up with a body that
looks like it needs a parts recall. (You know: gorilla shoulders atop
chicken legs, or piston-like gams attached to a computer-nerd torso.)
Fact is, triathletes are fitter than any single-sport athlete. Triathlon
rules.
|
