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Comment by inopinatus | Hacker News Reader

I think this remark illuminates the psychological barrier that I’m alluding to. To be clear, I’m speaking of potential, not of the likely outcome if you took someone off the street today at the median ability of all current bicycle owners worldwide.

If someone is healthy and fit enough to ordinarily ride a bicycle, then with the right equipment and preparation they will almost certainly be able to ascend the likes of Mt Hotham, and with a lot more preparation they will probably be able to do it six times. If they really want to. Probably. I speak as living proof of that, because only a few years prior to doing so I weighed 120kg, smoked forty cigarettes a day, owned no bicycle at all, and had sat on my backside for years without any cardiovascular exercise.

At the time of writing, there’s only one other documented everesting of Hotham in the hall of fame, and frankly that surprises me.

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I'll add myself as a second data point here. Lots of beer. Lots of cigarettes. Lots of sitting and programming.

Now most of my friends think I'm some kind of elite athlete and I am not, I just rode around on a bike every couple of days for several years. It is incredible what a change in lifestyle can do.

The average person can absolutely everest, or ride 100k, or whatever, given a bit of training. Of course, training for a year so you can ride your bike up and down a hill all day isn't that appealing to most folks. But it could still be done.

Both of you guys are relying one data point. If you look at the literature on exercise adaptation you actually find a incredibly large variance in the response.

There are a decent amount of people, who just don't adapt to exercise.

Any links would have been great :) But yes non-responders do exist, and some people even discover serious cardiac conditions through exercise.

In an attempt to clarify "decent amount", maybe this helps? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-018-01041-1

I don't generally understand these surveys. This one seems to indicate the term "non-responder" is not just unhelpful, but possibly damaging.

"Thus, just because an individual does not improve their VO2max or 1RM with training, this does not mean that they have not derived a multitude of other benefits from exercise, many of which, such as increased social interaction seen in community exercise settings"

What I don't see in this survey is anything related to "off the couch" improvements, which is clearly what we are talking about. Neither myself nor GP said we went from regionals to nationals. We went from cigarettes and beer to recreational riding. I have a hard time believing those gains aren't available to almost everyone. But, I didn't find a study so it doesn't exist :)

If you look at all the positive benefits of exercise you find very few people who don't get some positive benefit from exercise whether that's better insulin sensitivity, better vO2 max, better cholesterol, or weight loss.

But when you look at one specific benefit of exercise such as the endurance required to accomplish these feats you find far more non responders.

Fair point, and great work pulling that off. I still remember when my own fitness was at a level I couldn't imagine doing a climb like Hotham - while I have done it more than 6 times now they certainly weren't all in one day!

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