Three weeks into a new fitness regimen, and John Batasar is already seeing significant results.
“I've lost 12 pounds,” says the 36-year-old engineer, even though he says he's eating more. “I've got muscles popping up I haven't seen in years.”
Four days a week, Mr. Batasar gets up for his workout shortly after dawn. He secures his feet in tall sturdy boots, straps pads around his knees, puts on gloves, goggles, a helmet and something called a roost protector. Then he swings his leg over an off-road motorcycle, fires up the 230-cc engine, snaps the throttle and peels away.
On this recent morning he starts with a few laps around an open field, then darts into the forest. The trail is tight and twisty. On short straighter stretches, he stands up and lets his limbs absorb the bumps. Coming into a corner, he drops down, leans the bike one way and his butt the other to make it whip around the bend. Before the bike has straightened, he's off the seat again to pop the front wheel over a log.
In deep sand, he leans back to weight the rear wheel. Going up steep hills, he puts his body forward to give the front tire bite.
Within minutes, there's sweat dripping from under his helmet. He's panting to catch his breath and grinning like a kid on a roller coaster. “I didn't think it'd be this demanding,” he says.
Mr. Batasar is taking part in a groundbreaking York University study to determine the health and fitness effects of off-road riding.
Non-riders have trouble believing exercise can come from being propelled by a combustion engine, and there's been little previous inquiry into the topic. Riders often refer to a U.S. study from the 1980s that tested the physical fitness of professional athletes from different disciplines. It found motocross racers the second-fittest of the bunch, after soccer players.
The York research is the first comprehensive fitness probe of recreational off-roaders. The final phase of the three-year, three-part study is still under way, but many participants report results that match preliminary findings from an earlier phase, suggesting trail riding requires physical exertion levels on par with running or calisthenics.
“When I brush my teeth I can now see my bicep pop,” says Sulan Ramdeen, a 23-year-old student who's riding a dirt bike four days a week for the study. She runs for 30 to 40 minutes four or five times a week, but says “I feel more tired at the end of a ride” than a run.
Milad Bazaz, who's been riding an all-terrain vehicle four times a week, has seen his stamina increase. Laid up for several months after a car accident, the 20-year-old student would easily get out of breath. “Before, I had to take a break cutting the grass for two hours,” he says. “But yesterday I did the lawn without a break, and then did the neighbour's – after two hours riding.”
“Balancing on an off-road vehicle is like sitting on a stability ball,” says Jamie Burr, a kinesiologist and exercise physiologist at York who is conducting the research as part of his PhD. “Controlling the handlebars – especially through the whoops – is like doing bench press and seated rows or upright rows. Standing up and down would be like squats or deep knee bends. Standing on the pegs is like doing toe raises.”
The impact isn't only on the body, participants say. “I've never been happier,” says Lauren Tannenbaum, 20, who's riding a bike four days a week.
Mr. Burr has the 60 riders in the study divided into two groups, half on motorcycles, half on ATVs. Most are York kinesiology students, but they range in age from 18 to 64 and include a Pilates instructor, an unemployed maintenance worker and a retired systems analyst. To qualify, they had to be new to riding and not exceptionally athletic.
