Fit Bones

The frame of your motorcycle serves as its structural foundation, providing support and connecting various components so they can work together to make the bike move. In humans, the skeleton is the frame that acts as the central support structure for the entire body.  The spine connects the skull to the pelvis and houses the spinal cord, which is analogous to the motorcycle's engine and vital electrical components. Both the motorcycle frame and the human skeleton must be strong as well as flexible to handle the dynamic forces they encounter.

The front forks and rear shocks on your motorcycle function as its suspension system, absorbing shocks and vibrations from the road. The joints in the human body must also absorb impact during movement. Your knees, hips, elbows, wrists, and spine all allow for a range of motion and act as the body's shock absorbers.

The suspension system of a motorcycle, - including the shocks, springs and seating, - maintain stability and comfort while riding. The springs in a motorbike allow for movement just as the muscles contract and relax to allow us to move. This is akin to the joints, muscles and ligaments in the human body, which work together to provide support, stability, and controlled movement. Muscles contract and relax to generate movement. Ligaments and tendons connect bones, muscles and joints to provide stability and prevent over extension which could be harmful.

Keeping the suspension and frame in tune

What’s important is a well-balanced diet that includes a variety of nutrient-rich foods to ensure you get all the necessary vitamins and minerals for good musculoskeletal health. Think stronger bones = no cracking frames or welding for you.  Maintaining a healthy lifestyle including regular exercise is crucial for overall musculoskeletal wellbeing.

For those over the age of around 48 years, you need to be lifting weights and building up muscle tone as a reserve for the future. Muscle tissue starts to waste away quickly as you move through the decades, and more rapidly so as you move through your late fifties, sixties and seventies. Weak muscles lead to poor joint stability and injuries. So, start getting muscle strength reserves in now, in order to support your future self.

In all my years treating people in a clinic, weak muscles and poor joint conditions were the biggest factors limiting people's activities and lifestyles as they got older. If they had invested earlier, just like how they invested in their pensions, the later damage could have been prevented.

Motorcycle joints work best when flexible, and suppleness begins to reduce as rubber mounts and surfaces (much like the cartilage in our joints) begin to wear or dry out.

To help reduce this in our bodies, try to include stretching exercises into a weekly regime.

Discs: (not your brakes!) these little fellows sit between your spinal joints (vertebrae) to act like cushions or suspension in your spine and help to absorb shock.  You have 7 vertebrae in your neck, 12 in the main part of your spine and 5 in your lower back. They are numbered in descending order (C)1-7 in your neck, (T)1-12 in your main spinal area and (L)1-5 in your low back.

Your discs receive their nutrition largely via a process called 'osmosis'. Osmosis is improved by maintaining your spinal flexibility, so the old adage "use it, or lose it" definitely comes into play here.

Your discs also shrink as you age, and given that most people have 23 discs, it is possible to lose an inch or more in height due to wear. Yes, you are actually getting shorter...

"My hip bones connected to my thigh bone; my thigh bones connected to my".... You know the song.

All your joints are important, and you won't realise this until one of them doesn't work properly and then all the others start to work badly too, because they then have to compensate for the rest.

As bikers we will inevitably have injuries, but even outside of motorcycling we will get injuries anyway. It's really important to make sure you are treated properly and promptly by people who know what they're doing. The quicker you can recover with good treatment, the better the healed outcome will be. This is one thing not to skimp on, otherwise it will come back to bite you later.