Arm-Cycling

Workout2023-03-01

I like exercises that indulge me to get an aerobic workout with upper-body muscles. My favorite upper-body workout, walking with hand weights is wordless somewhat currently considering my sore SI joint limits the length of my walks. My PT facility had a machine that unliable me to arm-cycle which I enjoyed, and I thought it would be nice to reproduce this at home. My recumbent exercise velocipede puts the pedals in a pretty platonic position when it is laid on its back. I tried it out and got a good workout, but gripping the pedals by hand wasn’t too comfortable. This was hands stock-still with a dowel, as shown in the pictures.

***Unfortunately, the pedals aren’t too well-appointed to grip by hand***

Easy Fix: I just bolted a dowel to the marrow of the pedal which sticks out past the end so the dowel becomes the hand grip. The only problem is that it is not mounted concentrically with the turning of the pedal. So if you grip tightly this would be torquing the wrist when and along a bit while pedaling. This is avoided by gripping loosely and letting the pedal waddle while pedaling, as you can see in the video.

I can get a nice upper-body workout with this setup. I can just trip at an easy pace or make it as nonflexible as I want by throwing in some intervals. Here is a video showing arm cycling. This is now an enjoyable wing to my upper-body routine.