How Cyclists can Manage Common Mental Health Challenges
Us cyclists are an interesting bunch. It takes a special type of person to want to sit on a small seat and pedal around for hours and hours. For many cyclists, riding a bike is much more than just an activity that we do to get a workout or burn some calories—it’s a passion. Speaking for myself, it’s just so much fun and it’s a getaway without getting away.
Cycling is exploring like a little kid again. It’s literally ups and downs and wandering here and there. It’s setting and conquering short and long term goals too. We can use cycling as a means to recover from an injury as well. Riding a bike can take us to a place and time to sort out our problems—in many ways.
Our cycling friends wind up being like-minded individuals and a great support system. I assume we all have varying reasons for our love of cycling, but I bet some of these reasons ring true for most of us. Because of these positives and more, cycling winds up being a moderator of our mental health for better and sometimes worse.
Cycling is a somewhat addictive activity purely by its nature:
You ride because it is fun/feels good
Riding consistently and/or more often build your strength
You realize it is more fun/ feels better if you are in better shape
Cycling becomes more fun
and this becomes an endless loop.
The loop of cycling activity is part of what creates the fitness and performance benefits that come with cycling. However, it can also lead to some negative behaviors that we should all be able to identify. Some of these negative behaviors include:
Cycling as the only way to moderate body weight
Cycling is the only form of social life
Feeling compelled to ride
Cycling through and/or causing more pain
Unable to reduce mileage or time riding
From my dealings with cycling friends, patients, and acquaintances, I notice most of us exhibit at least one of these behaviors listed above. As with all things in life, this is not black and white. Experiencing some of these feelings and behaviors is of no concern, but when they solidify into habits or identities, mental and physical health can be negatively affected. I want to dive deeper into these individual behaviors and talk about the positive and negative effects, as well as how to work towards healthier behaviors. Mental health and positive health behaviors are not a quick change and will forever be a work in progress for myself and for all of us. Think of mental health as a practice and way of life as opposed to a short term goal to achieve.
As a quick disclaimer, most of my advice and insight will be targeted towards the negative physical effects of these behaviors as my background is in physical therapy. If you are struggling with your mental health as it relates to sports or just life in general, it can be beneficial to seek out mental health care to help determine the best plan for you.
Cycling as the only way to moderate body weight
Cycling is a great way to burn calories. This makes it appealing to many individuals for maintaining or losing body weight. The issue in relying purely on physical activity for maintaining body weight is that you will eventually hit a plateau or injury. In physical therapy, we frequently see patients exercising more than their body can currently tolerate, leading to overuse injuries caused by the goal of losing weight. This tends to also snowball into mental health challenges linked to not achieving goals, body image, and being unable to do their favorite hobby (cycling).
Endurance sports and cardiovascular activity should be viewed as a great way to improve your cardiovascular health, which may have the great side effect of losing body fat. Focusing on a diet that improves your ability to perform while engaging in a balanced exercise and training regimen will be the best way to address body composition, which is the most important part of changing body weight. Check out my blog here about how You Can’t Out Exercise Your Diet. It is important to focus on body composition and not purely on your overall weight. Losing muscle mass can be detrimental to your cycling fitness and pose many other health risks in the short and long term including decreasing your metabolism.
It is important to know that your riding volume will not always be consistent. There will be times where life gets in the way and you cannot ride as much. There will be times when you are fatigued or injured and your volume will have to drop. Unfortunately, there are chances of more traumatic injuries in cycling that can keep us off of the bike as well. To avoid the compounded mental strain of dealing with weight loss and gain, make sure to pay attention to the other factors affecting body composition including improving lean muscle mass.
A well known issue in cycling is body dysmorphia. Most cyclists are fit if not exceptionally fit. Our brains will often perceive that we are not fit enough or have too much fat even when we are perfectly healthy due to the strength/power to body weight equation that is important in cycling. We should all be aware that our mind will play tricks on us. We wake up some days feeling overweight and others feeling great about ourselves. Try to rely on some objective factors to gauge your fitness and body composition such as body fat percentage and your functional threshold power.
Under-eating to lower your body weight can lead to issues such as decreased bone density and malnutrition. It is most important to work on improving your fitness and strength over losing more and more body weight. In most cases, performance gains in cycling power, endurance and muscular strength will cause decreased body fat when compounded with good dietary habits.
Cycling is your only form of social life
Most cyclists spend many hours per week cycling. It is easy to develop a social life around the sport since we are largely a like-minded group of people who share common interests. Having a social life is important to most of us. Friends, family, and people to bond with is a huge part of what makes us human.
Building a diverse network of friends can stave off some of the issues that arise with changes in cycling and training life. It is important to have bonds and support networks that are not solely tied to one aspect of your life. This shouldn’t be forced, but making sure that your whole social life is not tied to cycling is important.
Many cyclists that I treat for injury struggle with mental health during their rehab because their time away from the bike or normal group rides has completely altered their social life. Times like these are where it is important to make sure your social life is somewhat diversified, even if this is with your cycling friends! Yes, this means you can hang out on friday nights and not just at the group ride!
Feeling compelled to ride
It is a great thing to want to ride. It is a great thing to love to ride! It is not as good of a thing to HAVE to ride. Exercise addiction is a real thing. There is a fine line between being a dedicated athlete with a strict training plan and exercise addiction.
As with any form of addiction, the first step is acknowledging that there is a problem. Some signs of exercise addiction are:
An inability to reduce the amount of exercise in a routine
Spending long periods preparing for and recovering from workouts/exercise
Uncontrollable urges to exercise
Reducing other life activities/ tasks/ responsibilities to exercise
Experiencing withdrawal symptoms in periods without exercise.
Most of us most likely experience some of these symptoms in varying intensities. The issue of addiction arises when we are unable to make changes to our exercise routine when it causes effect in other parts of our lives.
In many cases, we become addicted to exercise to deal with other stressors or hardships in life. Sometimes it is due to trauma that we are trying to work through. If you feel that addiction is affecting you and exercise is involved in this addiction, consulting a mental health professional may be best to help you work through some of the underlying causes.
Cycling through and/or causing more pain
This is piggy-backing off of the last point. Pain is part of the sport of cycling. You may even consider it part of the fun. That burning feeling in your legs as you put forth a hard effort almost always yields a tremendous feeling of accomplishment afterwards.
This is very different from continuously training through pain, or an inability to stop training despite injury. Here are a few signs of pain that you should definitely listen to:
Pain that lasts >3 days
Pain that increases as you ride
Pain that is worse after you ride on more than 1 or 2 consecutive rides
Pain that is worse with higher efforts
Rest does not let you go back to normal
Riding causes changes in your functional ability off of the bike
If you meet any of this criteria, you may greatly benefit from consulting a medical professional that works with cyclists. Cyclists frequently avoid medical care in fear of being told that they cannot ride. A medical professional that works with cyclists will most likely be able to help you return to cycling as fast as possible or incorporate cycling into your recovery to keep you on track.
Unable to reduce mileage or time riding
This is not an issue for all cyclists, but for those who ride A LOT, it can be difficult to take a step back. A constant workload is not necessarily a good thing. We need hard weeks, and we need easy weeks. Goals to work toward and periods of focused training are good for athletes of all levels. Sometimes our only goal is mileage, and this can be detrimental to our mental health and fitness. It can weigh on us heavily to not hit these mileage goals, however big or small. It is important to remember that quality miles and training are more important than quantity. This quality does not have to be packed with intervals, climbing, or strict zone 2 work. My favorite type of quality ride is one where I am just out with a good friend. The worst rides are the ones you force yourself to go on.
There is great benefit to some time off. If you are someone forcing yourself to work towards a mileage goal, there is a good likelihood that a day off will make you faster as well as make your next ride more enjoyable.
Make sure to take note of your cycling time affecting other aspects of your life. The balance of responsibility, family, non-cycling relationships, and rest is important. Riding time can negatively impact these other parts of your life and eventually come back to weigh on your mental health. I am in no position to help someone balance these situations, but being aware of them in the first place is a starting point, and may allow you to realize when it is time to make changes.
Summary
While there are many tips woven into this article, I want to finish with a few that can help to prevent mental health struggles that can come with cycling. These won’t fix everything, but they are at least good practice for maintaining a combination of good mental and physical health.
1. Have a schedule but don’t be afraid to break it
You’re allowed to skip a ride now and again! Whether it is due to fun, or responsibility.
2. Have Other Physical Hobbies That Can Be An Outlet
You can call this cross-training if that makes you feel better. Just make sure that cycling is not the only thing that you do. Make sure these other activities substitute for cycling, and don’t just add on to a higher training load.
3. Have Friends Who Don’t Cycle
Hang out with non-cyclists. They can be more fun than you think!
4. Schedule Breaks and Time Away From Cycling
Take a true vacation or just a week off now and again. You would be surprised to find out that the professionals sometimes take even more than a week off.
5. Ride Alone or With Someone Who Lets You Set The Pace
Make sure some of your riding is solo or allows you to dictate the pace. It is easy to overtrain by having to hang with your friends.
We Provide Cycling Specific Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy
Many cyclists get injured from time to time. We can even find ourselves cycling regularly with nagging pain. If you are in this situation or want to get back on your bike after an injury or surgery, request an appointment now so one of our physical therapists can evaluate your situation. You do not need a doctor’s referral to gain access to our help. You can also call our office at 908-598-9009 for more information.