Bike Fitness

[TrailmixHawkeye]

I understand Fitbit will not track cycling but wondering how comparable calorie wise biking is to treadmill?

I live in the midwest and we have our fair share of snow.   Looking for an alternative to the treadmill and have been considering buying a bike for the spring.

Looking for others who may have more cycling experice and can offer some guidance especially around what sort of workout one can expect and what is the best set up for indoor cycle training until the snow goes away!

Thanks~

[Sunny2007]

When I do something that will not be tracked on my Fitbit, I wear a heartrate monitor so that I can enter the time with more accurate calories manually.  I got by monitor for less than $50 at Walmart--it has a strap to wear and a watch/monitor.  

Hope this helps.

[SamC]

On the treadmill I usually burn about 300 to 400 calories in 3 miles at 4 to 5 MPH. On the bike I will burn around 100 calories for 5 miles at 100 RPM's. You can burn about 600 calories in a high intensity spin class at the gym. I was told, I am no expert, your workout on either piece of equipment at high intensity is for cardio and lower intensity is for fat burning. I prefer the bike indoors and the street for walking/jogging. If your thinking of a bike, check out the spin bikes and a good video. You'll burn lots of calories. The treadmill does get boring to me.

[Spang]

I use map my ride. That keeps track of a lot of different types of exercise and then I record the activity into fitbet.

[Heybales]

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@TrailmixHawkeye wrote:

I understand Fitbit will not track cycling but wondering how comparable calorie wise biking is to treadmill?

I live in the midwest and we have our fair share of snow.   Looking for an alternative to the treadmill and have been considering buying a bike for the spring.

Looking for others who may have more cycling experice and can offer some guidance especially around what sort of workout one can expect and what is the best set up for indoor cycle training until the snow goes away!

Thanks~

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It's easy to hit the same HR you would running - meaning you are burning the same calories.

Easy enough you can usually go higher HR on biking than running, because it's less impact.

You can also do it for longer.

You can also do it the next day usually with no ill effects, unlike running sometimes is a tad bad intense day after day.

It's also more like intervals almost automatically, hard up the hill and easy coast down, coast to the red light and then sprint away on green, ect. Which also makes it a very effective workout.

So easy, I make my recovery cardio running, because I can slow that way down. But if on the bike, I don't want to. And it can easily negatively impact a good lifting workout, either before or after.

[Lands]

I am a "late aged" dirtbiker and use my fitbit one together with my HRM to keep fit and in shape enough to still be able to ride with the youngsters. My gym workouts are typically spread over three machines, elliptical trainer, treadmill, and stationary bicycle. I have found the elliptical trainer to be the easiest to get to my upper heart rate training zone, and it is a no impact machine. Regarding calories burnt, I also feel this machine would burn slightly more in the same period and at the same intensity as one is using both lower and upper body to achieve this and thus incorporating more muscles. My Polar HRM obviously only estimates my calorie values based on the heart rate value, so this would show equal on any piece of equipment.Following the calorie estimate on the actual machines, there is a clear difference with the highest value being the elliptical trainer, followed by the treadmill, and lastly the stationary bicycle. But these are again all estimates.

[Baltoscott]

I agree with Heybales -- with hills and gears you can get a great calorie burn on a bike. I bike commute and wear fitbit one in my pocket when I ride. I also usually track the rides with a garmin bike computer and HRM on garmin's web app. I don't worry about it being exactly right on the fitbit website so I just take the hills and "steps" that the One records and call it good.

If I were you would get the bike and just think of it as an alternative to your other exercise that keeps you from getting bored. If you get into it, you can throw a rack on the back so you can carry some stuff and use it as an alternative to the car for some of your daily errands.

[Spang]

Easy constant ride at about 75 to 80 percent will bur fat for the first hour. You will have to eat something at about 45 min. if you plan on riding long that an hour to protect your muscles/protein.

I find that a hard less then one hour ride force the body to improve and then a long distance ride cut the fat. It is best to alternate.

Yesterday I had no car so I rode 19.95 miles to the dentist. It feels good to know that I can do that.

I can not stand spin -- I like feeling the wind and smelling nature.