This reminds me of my own wacky idea for a line of fitness products: ordinary everyday items that are normal in every way except that they are intentionally designed to be physically challenging to use.
For example, doors that require a lot of force to open, keyboards with 1lb resistance springs, remote controls that weigh several kilograms, etc. Since many people have trouble going to the gym, it would be a way to introduce weight training in a way that was both unobtrusive and unavoidable.
Just one of those things that has been bouncing around in my head for years now. I think riding this bike would definitely qualify as weight training :)
This is similar to my business plan where I start a combo moving company / personal training service and charge people to move other people's furniture. Double profit!
"and approach to moving as a sport, requiring dedication and teamwork. Many Gentle Giant employees are current or former athletes from a wide variety of sports and competitive backgrounds. Current and former employees include both Olympic, collegiate and club rowers."
We think alike! I would have started that company years ago if not for the threat of the inevitable lawsuit when a client drops a grand piano on someone’s head.
Except that moving boxes and furniture doesnt promote fitness. Most of your time will be sitting in a truck. Then it will be repetitive motions with moderate weights. It would be more akin to life as a fedex driver than a modern workout.
You don't even need to be in space if you want to make things heavier. As always the great David Jones (Daedalus) had this idea first in his New Scientist column (16th Feb 1968), and it's included in the compendium "The inventions of Daedalus"
It's much easier to get married, so you'll have the weekly task of going to the store by foot and bring back bagfuls of groceries, and possibly two packs of bottled water... then return there because you forgot two bags of cat's litter:)
More seriously, ages ago I wondered about a way to generate power by making sort of a (very compact) exoskeleton-like contraption for each limb articulation, so walking or using arms would activate some generators. Mechanical construction would be quite a challenge, however if built in a very compact wearable way it could become a thing: sensors for body parameters could self power, the phone in a pocket equipped with a inductive charger would charge while running, etc.
> so you'll have the weekly task of going to the store by foot and bring back bagfuls of groceries, and possibly two packs of bottled water... then return there because you forgot two bags of cat's litter:)
it's the "by foot" part where this may not work as you intended.
I once met a guy on a bike ride who trained with a kids trailer loaded down with bricks. He claimed that it was more time-efficient way to train, and on race days, his bike felt like it was made of helium. My only concerns are wear&tear on knees, and the risk of a crash, getting smashed by a 200lb trailer doesn't sound fun.
The Airhub resistance trainer is a safer option. It can selectively apply magnetic resistance (drag) in order to make training rides harder. But when switched off the bike rides like normal, and there are no extra safety risks.
Wear on the knees is more an issue of proper bike fit and pedaling technique. If you want to get fit as a cyclist then you have to put in some high wattage training rides. Whether the resistance comes from a heavy trailer or a steep hill or whatever makes no difference to the knee injury risk.
I know a similar story retold by yellow-jacket wearing cofee drinkers of a man who trains on a heavy mountain bike weighed down with offroad equipment and spares. The humm of his fat mountain bike tyres on the road approaching inspires ire and jelousy.
It would be a cosmic irony, since humans have been trying to make things "easier" since at least 4000 years.
I have another idea, make a lot of crank generators so that biochemical energy gets converted into electricity. I know you won't power your kettle nor your telsa but considering people 1) pay for exercise [0] 2) pay to power the devices to exercise .. I think it's due time.
[0] gym club managed to market gravity (and social context, but mostly gravity).
Everything here sounds like a recipe for injury. When you're lifting heavy things you should be focused on (correctly) lifting the heavy thing. If you turn the oven door into a deadlift you're going to forget one day and throw out your back.
For some reason the feeling of getting exhausted on an ultralight racing bike feels much easier on the mind than getting exhausted on a regular bike with a flat tire. Similar with swimming with slick gear versus swimming with long shorts and a shirt.
There's something to be said about overloading the effort required though. We used to train endurance by dragging a tire behind us in the water. When it came to race day, everything would feel 10x easier.
> This reminds me of my own wacky idea for a line of fitness products: ordinary everyday items that are normal in every way except that they are intentionally designed to be physically challenging to use.
Not exactly an everyday item, but people who want to train for "tactical" things with ballistic armored vests, either because they work for a PMC or are actually in the military, can buy steel plates to put in a plate carrier which exactly match the dimensions of an expensive ($2000+) ceramic plate set, for weight and balance purposes and train with those.
Famous Russian wrestler a century ago walked with a cane 16 kg weight.
For simple mortals like me - while hiking I've been using the Nordic poles with 8 inches springed amortization which naturally works up your upper body.
1kg of lead is like 90mL. I just measured my quite svelte TV remote at 22cm x 2cm x 5cm = 220mL. I'm sure you could easily fit 1.5 kilos of lead in there, and with a slightly thicker "A/V receiver" style remote we could easily make that 3-4kg
Along the same lines, I’ve wondered why gyms don’t hook up all their weight machines up to a big generator. Gym members would be paying the gym to reduce the gym’s electric bill.
Another interesting idea I've had many many years ago: Skies that have enough buoyancy to be able to float on the sea while a person is standing on them. Do that you ski across the sea. Although the movement would be closer to rollerblades, due to lack of hills.
What you're describing would be called "skate skiing" on snow, and it's absolutely a thing. Not pooh poohing the idea, but imagine the fun of a loss of balance on the open sea. It'd make a waterski crash look downright convenient.
The door idea is a safety issue, but there's a market for a gag-gift remote control holder that's a barbell, for sure. Whether it helps anyone is an open question, but it hits the sweet spot for twee Americana gas station stuff.
I am picking up a 16kg and a 12kg masses several times a day, and I am sure that this keeps me in shape. Basically, because I didn't have time to go to the gym in the last five years.
It seems like anyone who’s a lazy TV watching bum would get RSIs from their remote control. I know my Apple TV remote does this to me when I use the integrated touchpad.
My favorite part of this project has got to be the helmet. For one, because it's pure concrete, with no metal frame inside it like the other parts. And second, because it best illustrates the utility of the project in that a concrete helmet is literally worse than useless.
> a concrete helmet is literally worse than useless.
Is it? It would still absorb energy upon impact. Which, in contrast to popular belief about bike helmets, is its main function. Yes, ordinary bike helmets will also just break. But in doing so, they absorb energy which then won't be absorbed by your skull.
There is no point in a perfectly stiff helmet. It would just transfer the energy right through and you'd crash your skull into the helmet, which doesn't help.
It may not be as much of a factor at bicycle speeds, but I've read that heavy helmets can dramatically increase whiplash in things like motorsport. The increased mass on your head means higher forces trying to rip it off. Obviously the other benefits of real helmets outweigh that issue, but I'd imagine a concrete helmet with very poor shock absorption and very high mass would not fair so well.
Concrete is pretty stiff.
But mostly, wearing such a helmet will make it much harder to move your head around to scan your surroundings, increasing the chance of accidents.
Concrete canoes are a thing civil engineers make for fun [1]. Weight can come in at under 10kg [2]. That's about half the weight of a typical canoe [3].
On that basis, one might be able to build a concrete bike that is lighter than a typical bike?
In the late 70's ferro-cement sailboats were a thing. I watched one get built at the marina where we kept our boat at the time. It's mentioned here [0], the Sandpiper.
My friends live in a 80s cement boat, and have done since they built it. Was brilliant but now uninsurable, and they are stuck unable to move it and worrying about every stormy day. That said, for over 20 years it was great, but once water gets in the cracks...
when I lived in JP (a part of Boston) I made my commuter bike "unstealable" by taping it and putting joint compound all over the frame. The thing was ugly as sin and looked at lot like this bike.
I could leave it locked with one of those cheap combination cable locks, and no one ever took it.
It sort of does. You can see the fork got damaged mid-span in some of the riding shots. Still there isn't enough strength in places like the fork ends or crown without the concrete.
Oh there’s a lot of fun concepts to muse about. But one is brakes.
That aside, at least it wouldn’t get stolen in Amsterdam.
Which reminds me of something a friend did. He lived in a neighborhood where anything visible would be stolen. So he took an old computer tower case and filled it with concrete. Then he left it on his front porch.
Predictably some guy tried to steal it. The poor fool managed to move it one house over before giving up and dropping it in the street.
The same thought went through my mind watching it, but you could say the same about most (many?) concrete structures. Someone with a structural background could explain better, but I believe the rebar and concrete provide different kinds of strength, like concrete is compressive strong (and keeps the minimal amount of rebar from moving around and bending, while the rebar keeps the concrete from cracking. Even for the bike, it wouldn't be the same structurally if they just wired up a rebar frame
I took civil engineering a long ago in college but diverged on my career. This is what I recall.
In reinforce concrete beams the bending causes compression on the top and tension on the bottom. Since concrete is weak in tension (maybe 1/10 of compression strength), the rebar at the bottom will carry the tension. When you do the design calculations, some approximations are made like concrete carries no tension on bottom half of beam and how the stress is distributed on the top portion. Then with iterative analysis you can converge on an solution. Then once you got the basic design, there will other rules like displacement, buckling conditions.
The combination with steel is what gives concrete its power. It's a composite material created by the two things together. Concrete surrounds the steel frame and penetrates it. It binds the steel together.
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For example, doors that require a lot of force to open, keyboards with 1lb resistance springs, remote controls that weigh several kilograms, etc. Since many people have trouble going to the gym, it would be a way to introduce weight training in a way that was both unobtrusive and unavoidable.
Just one of those things that has been bouncing around in my head for years now. I think riding this bike would definitely qualify as weight training :)
https://www.gentlegiantrowing.org/sponsor
"and approach to moving as a sport, requiring dedication and teamwork. Many Gentle Giant employees are current or former athletes from a wide variety of sports and competitive backgrounds. Current and former employees include both Olympic, collegiate and club rowers."
https://www.goodgym.org/
Build a space station with gravity via rotation. Then spin it up to 150% of normal gravity. Now everything is 50% heavier, yourself included!
More seriously, ages ago I wondered about a way to generate power by making sort of a (very compact) exoskeleton-like contraption for each limb articulation, so walking or using arms would activate some generators. Mechanical construction would be quite a challenge, however if built in a very compact wearable way it could become a thing: sensors for body parameters could self power, the phone in a pocket equipped with a inductive charger would charge while running, etc.
it's the "by foot" part where this may not work as you intended.
https://airhub.com.au/
Wear on the knees is more an issue of proper bike fit and pedaling technique. If you want to get fit as a cyclist then you have to put in some high wattage training rides. Whether the resistance comes from a heavy trailer or a steep hill or whatever makes no difference to the knee injury risk.
He wins the local triathlons quite regularly.
I have another idea, make a lot of crank generators so that biochemical energy gets converted into electricity. I know you won't power your kettle nor your telsa but considering people 1) pay for exercise [0] 2) pay to power the devices to exercise .. I think it's due time.
[0] gym club managed to market gravity (and social context, but mostly gravity).
This may be a good recipe for tendinitis.
Not exactly an everyday item, but people who want to train for "tactical" things with ballistic armored vests, either because they work for a PMC or are actually in the military, can buy steel plates to put in a plate carrier which exactly match the dimensions of an expensive ($2000+) ceramic plate set, for weight and balance purposes and train with those.
I'm sure there would be mech keyboard enthusiasts who would find the actuation force too light on those
For simple mortals like me - while hiking I've been using the Nordic poles with 8 inches springed amortization which naturally works up your upper body.
That would require either very expensive metals, or a giant remote control.
But something like this is already done - a lot of people use leg weights as an extra in the gym.
Think of the profits from thiw move fast and break things approach! Always be hustling.
Another interesting idea I've had many many years ago: Skies that have enough buoyancy to be able to float on the sea while a person is standing on them. Do that you ski across the sea. Although the movement would be closer to rollerblades, due to lack of hills.
I am picking up a 16kg and a 12kg masses several times a day, and I am sure that this keeps me in shape. Basically, because I didn't have time to go to the gym in the last five years.
These already exist! Especially when a door opens outward and it's windy outside and the wind is pushing against it.
Basically you put some bricks or weights into your backpack and take a walk.
And yes, it is a thing.
Is it? It would still absorb energy upon impact. Which, in contrast to popular belief about bike helmets, is its main function. Yes, ordinary bike helmets will also just break. But in doing so, they absorb energy which then won't be absorbed by your skull.
There is no point in a perfectly stiff helmet. It would just transfer the energy right through and you'd crash your skull into the helmet, which doesn't help.
Concrete canoes are a thing civil engineers make for fun [1]. Weight can come in at under 10kg [2]. That's about half the weight of a typical canoe [3].
On that basis, one might be able to build a concrete bike that is lighter than a typical bike?
[1] https://www.asce.org/communities/student-members/conferences...
[2] https://www.concrete.org/Portals/0/Files/PDF/20-1stPlace-Kon...
[3] https://paddlecamp.com/how-much-does-a-canoe-weigh/
[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=COilQT7iWTgC&pg=PP436&lpg=...
Some examples from less well-known creators:
Drunk Mel Gibson arrest diorama https://youtu.be/2UoHb0ziMDA
Knife throwing machine https://youtu.be/-BKEZbYOMpI
3d printed harmonic drive https://youtu.be/Emvo3bLT-Z4
https://youtube.com/c/Slingshotchannel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFtc3XdXgLFwhlDajMGK69w
LaserSaber:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIKzUKkh7XtnSYPW0AJb-9w
or StyroPyro:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJYJgj7rzsn0vdR7fkgjuIA
They have similarity to the Quint BUILDs channel that the knife throwing machine video came from. They all do some pretty crazy builds.
I could leave it locked with one of those cheap combination cable locks, and no one ever took it.
Sadly I can't find pics. It was not a bike that photographed well.
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That aside, at least it wouldn’t get stolen in Amsterdam.
Which reminds me of something a friend did. He lived in a neighborhood where anything visible would be stolen. So he took an old computer tower case and filled it with concrete. Then he left it on his front porch.
Predictably some guy tried to steal it. The poor fool managed to move it one house over before giving up and dropping it in the street.
Yes, concrete provides great compressive strength, but is not very strong given tensile loading.
Rebar provides the tensile loading support that concrete alone lacks.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebar
In reinforce concrete beams the bending causes compression on the top and tension on the bottom. Since concrete is weak in tension (maybe 1/10 of compression strength), the rebar at the bottom will carry the tension. When you do the design calculations, some approximations are made like concrete carries no tension on bottom half of beam and how the stress is distributed on the top portion. Then with iterative analysis you can converge on an solution. Then once you got the basic design, there will other rules like displacement, buckling conditions.
Here is an example design calculation I could find: https://civilengineeringbible.com/subtopics.php?i=32