Leah: "So with all the standing I do (because I (erroneously?) believe it gives me an upper body workout as I pull on the bars up giant hills, this is a risky thing, huh?"
Arm and core work happens to varying degrees with every pedal stroke. The more you pull up on the bars in opposition to you pedal stroke down, the greater the arm work out. Ideally, all motion (legs and arms) initiates in your core (because of modern chairs et al, core muscles tend to be fairly weak), the idea being that big work should be done with big muscles, then attenuated through small muscles (hips, legs, feet) in finer gratiation of application and finesse. Your core can't push the pedals, that's what feet are fore, but it can initiate the engery push through the hips, to the legs, to the feet, each of which refines and applies that power along the way until it goes into a pedal traveling in a circle. None of this is dependent on standing, though applying power through a high, parallel handlebar, such as Bosco, is made far easier standing than sitting (as opposed to a more perpendicular bar, such as bullmoose, that make sitting power strokes very easy. All of which is to say you may want to play (within the limits of your current stem) some more before trying for a taller stem. Enjoy! With abandon, Patrick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/c21ac097-4ade-4d6a-a2a7-4a6fe6e599de%40googlegroups.com.
