Biorhythms: Fact or Fiction?

Biorhythms have fascinated me for a very long time. I just never could understand why, in the course of my three-month P90X training or over the course of a long summer of biking, I would have really great days where I feel super strong and other days were I'm dogging it so bad I want to just give up. How is it possible to go from one extreme to the other in just a matter of a day or two? I just makes no sense at all to me. I tried to explain it away with the day's food intake or amount of sleep the night before, but that usually didn't hold up. I am a very consistent person and get the exact same amount of sleep just about every night of the year. I also am a very consistent eater so why the huge swings in my athletic performance?

So if it's not food intake or amount of sleep what is left? OK sure, maybe my monthly menstrual cycle plays a part. I could see how that could make me feel weaker . . . but it sure doesn't explain why my husband reports the same phenomenon in his performance! There must be some other explanation.

Which leads me to biorhythms. For those of you not familiar with this term, here is the definition taken from Wikipedia . . ."A person's life is affected by rhythmic biological cycles which affect one's ability in various domains, such as mental, physical, and emotional activity. These cycles begin at birth and oscillate in a steady sine wave fashion throughout life; thus, by modeling them mathematically, a person's level of ability in each of these domains can be predicted from day to day."

With this theory, your various levels of performance, be it physical, mental, or emotional vary from day to day and are pre-determinded. I downloaded a handy dandy little app to my Droid and over the past few months when I find that I'm having a particularly strong day, or a particularly weak day I checked my personal biorhythm – just for fun. And I'll be damned, the results almost always jived with what I suspected they would be. I don't pay much attention to the emotional or the intellectual, but the physical reading seems pretty easy to track.

And this is bad news. I just went ahead in time to see what my biorhythm will be during my upcoming 4-day biking trip to Moab. I've been stressing about this trip as I'm training for a challenging bike ride, in the dead of winter, buried under feet of snow. What could make this trip even more of a challenge at this point? The fact that my biorhythm tells me I will be at my absolute LOWEST physical point during the entire 4 days. GREAT! Just what I needed to hear. Now with this new knowledge in my head I'll have an even harder time getting through the trip. I have to conquer, not only the physical demands of the right, but the mental block in my head.

Here are a couple of links to see your own biorhythm charts: http://www.facade.com/biorhythm/ and http://www.bio-chart.com/. Or look for an app for your smart phone. My Droid app was free and works like a charm. But be cautioned . . . don't go looking into the future and setting yourself up for undo concern!


If you have any experience with biorhythm, please drop me a line. I would love to hear about it.