"No pain, no gain," may be the advice of coaches and trainers around the world, but it may not be true when it comes to cycling, research from Australia suggests.

In a series of bicycle time trials, cyclists experienced less pain during the last trial than during the first. What's more, the bikers covered more ground even though they did not pedal any harder.

Intense exercise and pain often go hand in hand, but there is little scientific research on the relationship between exercise and pain and discomfort. Dr. Peter S. Micalos and colleagues at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst set out to measure the intensity of muscle pain during cycling.

Eight men and three women with a range of cycling experience volunteered for the study. Over the course of a couple of weeks, each participant rode his or her bike on a stationary trainer three times.

During each session, participants were told to cycle the greatest distance as possible within an hour, although they did not have to maintain a particular speed. Every 10 minutes, riders were instructed to "sprint" for a minute to simulate intense training.

As would be expected, over the course of cycling for an hour, muscle pain became more intense.

But pain intensity was not the same in each session, the researchers report in the June issue of the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine.

Muscle pain during the last 10 minutes of the third cycling trial was significantly less intense than during the last few minutes of the first trial.

The results are in contrast with a previous study that found that muscle pain was consistent throughout several exercise sessions. But the authors note that the exercise sessions in the current study were three times as long as in the previous study, which could have accounted for the difference.

One thing that is certain is that the drop in pain intensity did not mean that cyclists were slacking off. In fact, cyclists' pedaling power remained steady throughout the three sessions.

But cyclists actually increased the distance covered while on the bike. One possible explanation, according to the report, is that cyclists changed their use of bicycle gears to cover more ground.

SOURCE: Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, June 2004.

Reference Source 89
July 29, 2004

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