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Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

#11

Post by avip »

VanillaCafe wrote: post #9

> Years later, when we discover these relics and hop on, it’s as if we never stopped biking. I'd like to challenge this. Barring scientific evidence to this fact, it is at best an anecdotal evidence, and so I will submit my own anecdote: I didn't ride a bike for about 10 years. When I started riding again, I definitely felt unsteady for the first few days or weeks compared to my previous riding ability. I was unstead…

Seconded. It takes serious mileage and time to regain full fluency. I am sure this is measurable - I actually fell once after a few years break, as I was not used to manoeuvring between cars. It's like saying "you don't forget how to play the piano". Well you don't, and you do, depends on how you define the "knowing" discussed - something the article did not do for obvious reasons.

Re: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

#12

Post by pdelbarba »

Fricken wrote: post #5

I was once an avid rock climber, but stopped for many years. One night on a surf trip in Indonesia I had someone hold my beer while I climbed a palm tree, which was only about 15 feet high, but that's still high enough that you don't want to fall. I got to the top of the trunk and reached up to grab one of the branches, and it was like, 'oh man, I'm so out of condition, I can barely grip this'. But then, accidentally…

This kind of illustrates an important point that I think a lot of people don't realize. Strength isn't just muscle mass but also neurological conditioning. You're not just stimulating your muscles to get bigger when you work out but also refining the "programming" used to control them. In some cases, possibly like yours, this effect can dominate everything else. This is also separate from the application technique as well, such as in the cases of body builders losing to much smaller pro arm-wrestlers.

Re: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

#13

Post by wtallis »

VanillaCafe wrote: post #9

> Years later, when we discover these relics and hop on, it’s as if we never stopped biking. I'd like to challenge this. Barring scientific evidence to this fact, it is at best an anecdotal evidence, and so I will submit my own anecdote: I didn't ride a bike for about 10 years. When I started riding again, I definitely felt unsteady for the first few days or weeks compared to my previous riding ability. I was unstead…

> When I started riding again, I definitely felt unsteady for the first few days or weeks compared to my previous riding ability.

This can happen to frequent riders simply as a result of switching to a different bike with different geometry from what you're used to. Eg. if you normally ride a mountain bike with a fairly upright posture and suddenly switch to a road bike with a low and narrow handlebars and toe overlap, or if you raise your seat after being accustomed to keeping it very low.

Re: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

#14

Post by hansthehorse »

Without evidence - I don't think it's that we don't forget how to ride but that an adult, any adult, can just get on a bike and ride it after operation is explained. Since everyone, or most everyone, rode one as a child we confuse this with "remembering" how to ride rather than having the adult reflexes and balance to naturally ride.

Re: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

#15

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Fricken wrote: post #5

I was once an avid rock climber, but stopped for many years. One night on a surf trip in Indonesia I had someone hold my beer while I climbed a palm tree, which was only about 15 feet high, but that's still high enough that you don't want to fall. I got to the top of the trunk and reached up to grab one of the branches, and it was like, 'oh man, I'm so out of condition, I can barely grip this'. But then, accidentally…

I came to love climbing as a sport partially because of what you're describing. You could be able to deadlift 450lb, do 10 pull ups with 100lb hanging off of your body, what have you, and still be an awful climber (like I was) despite having so much grip and upper and lower body strength. It's all about technique, and it takes years to nail it down. That feeling of progression is a lot of fun and it isn't linear at all.

I love bouldering most because sometimes you can brute force problems, sometimes you absolutely can't - you'll spend a few sessions trying to figure out this one pain in the ass movement or hold, then one day... You've got it, and you don't lose it. It's a ton of fun and I like to think it's actually great for your body and mind. Sometimes it feels a bit like wall-yoga.

Re: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

#16

Post by avip »

hansthehorse wrote: post #14

Without evidence - I don't think it's that we don't forget how to ride but that an adult, any adult, can just get on a bike and ride it after operation is explained. Since everyone, or most everyone, rode one as a child we confuse this with "remembering" how to ride rather than having the adult reflexes and balance to naturally ride.

This is immediately falsified by grabbing an adult, any adult, and watch him learn a thing, anything, that relies on subtle balance and body control.

Re: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

#17

Post by therein »

hansthehorse wrote: post #14

Without evidence - I don't think it's that we don't forget how to ride but that an adult, any adult, can just get on a bike and ride it after operation is explained. Since everyone, or most everyone, rode one as a child we confuse this with "remembering" how to ride rather than having the adult reflexes and balance to naturally ride.

I imagine they'd have a hard time keeping the front bar straight. I remember that being the main issue when I was learning it as a kid.

Had I not acquired that sense of balance associated with the front bar's alignment through practice, I don't think I would have been able to hear someone say "conservation of angular momentum", pick up a bike and start riding it.

Re: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

#18

Post by grayrest »

hansthehorse wrote: post #14

Without evidence - I don't think it's that we don't forget how to ride but that an adult, any adult, can just get on a bike and ride it after operation is explained. Since everyone, or most everyone, rode one as a child we confuse this with "remembering" how to ride rather than having the adult reflexes and balance to naturally ride.

An anecdote:

I own a recumbent bike. Learning to ride it wasn't difficult, I was able to wobble around and had to regularly put my foot down the first couple minutes and got my balance for real within a day. I let other people ride it when they ask me about it and my experience seems fairly normal.

By contrast, at one point I went 10 years without riding a bike. When I got back on, I could immediately ride. No wobbling, no learning curve.

I've seen videos of other adults learning to ride bikes and it doesn't take them long to learn how to ride but it's not immediate.

Re: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

#19

Post by baddox »

ken wrote: post #8
baddox wrote: post #6

Does anyone find anything odd or unique about the fact that we don’t forget how to ride a bike? I can’t think of any similar activity that people do forget.

Despite what the article suggests about playing a musical instrument, I picked up an instrument that I used to play (for ~10 years), a couple years ago, and I was completely lost. Tone, pitch, form, fingering, tuning, reading sheet music, knowing scales -- pretty much everything was just gone. It was not at all "like riding a bike". I played around for a few weeks but it felt like I was starting from scratch.

I’m a musician, so I considered the example of playing an instrument. It’s an interesting example, because it certainly requires a lot of muscle memory that becomes “automatic” with practice, but it also usually requires conscious thought about what you’re playing (which basic bicycling does not). I would expect that the basic muscle memory parts would be hard to forget, but that the conscious decisions would be easy to forget.

I’ve never taken long breaks from my main instruments, but it sounds like you forgot both aspects of playing. I did play trombone for a few years starting in middle school, but haven’t played in over a decade. I definitely remember the basic slide positions for notes and a few of the common scales, but I wonder how well I would be able to play the trombone now.

Re: Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?

#20

Post by adrianN »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #15
Fricken wrote: post #5

I was once an avid rock climber, but stopped for many years. One night on a surf trip in Indonesia I had someone hold my beer while I climbed a palm tree, which was only about 15 feet high, but that's still high enough that you don't want to fall. I got to the top of the trunk and reached up to grab one of the branches, and it was like, 'oh man, I'm so out of condition, I can barely grip this'. But then, accidentally…

I came to love climbing as a sport partially because of what you're describing. You could be able to deadlift 450lb, do 10 pull ups with 100lb hanging off of your body, what have you, and still be an awful climber (like I was) despite having so much grip and upper and lower body strength. It's all about technique, and it takes years to nail it down. That feeling of progression is a lot of fun and it isn't linear at a…

Technique is super important. Female climbers obviously don't have the same kind of strength as men, which is why they climb differently. That doesn't mean that they're (much) worse than their male competitors.
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