Been looking to do biking instead of jogging for two reasons: All the running surfaces here are concrete, which is bad for the knees, and biking generates a much stronger breeze, which helps cool one down a lot more in Texas heat.
How much biking does one have to do for it to be roughly equivalent to what 1 mile of jogging or running would have done for the body? 5 miles?
I’m assuming you mean calories burned, which isn’t the only way to measure equivalence in exercise. For that, running burns roughly twice the calories vs biking over the same time. Distance complicates the calculations as speed changes the numbers.
That seems weird to me. Fundamentally, you’re still moving the same mass the same distance, so it should pretty much be the same calorie burn regardless of speed.
Testing this hypothesis, I asked Google how many calories are burned walking a mile, and it said 100. Then I asked how many calories are burned running a mile, and it said between 80 and 140. That seems kind of in line with the idea that speed is largely irrelevant. I would think the same would hold true for cycling. Not that cycling should be the same as running / walking, but that cycling a given distance should be roughly the same calorie burn regardless what speed you ride at.
EDIT: My response is possibly to a misinterpretation. I interpreted the quoted bit to mean that the amount of calories burned while cycling changes based on the speed at which you choose to cycle. (Choosing a different gear could make a difference, I’d imagine.)
Looking at your cite and considering equal perceived exertion I don’t see that.
Place me at that 155 pound mark. Moderately vigorous running for an hour is a bit more than 6 mph and same perceived intensity biking is about 14 to 15 mph. (Similar heart rates hit too. Although studies on VO2 max protocols usually have cycling topping off at lower heart rates than treadmill protocols do.)
Both clock at roughly 700 Kcal for the hour. Now admittedly I’m a plodding runner and a better cyclist.
Bottom line I think is that most do not exert themselves as intensely consistently cycling as running but cycle longer. But push to same level of intensity and METS/KCal out, overall impact on cardiorespiratory fitness should be about the same.
You’re constantly putting energy into the you-bike system, which means energy is also constantly leaving that system through some other route. On a bicycle, that other route is mostly air resistance, and a bit from rolling resistance. Both air resistance and rolling resistance increase with speed.
Going beyond the specific op there are other significant advantages and disadvantages of each. Both mostly reflections of the same thing: running is more stress on your muscles and bones.
The obvious pounding of impact of course, but also how the muscles are used: all concentric for cycling and a mix of concentric and eccentric for running.
But stress is not bad per se. The pounding is what triggers increased bone density response. The muscle damage is what triggers growth. We want some stress to our systems. That is how we get the desired positive adaptations. Not too much not too often is what matters. The harder the stress the smaller the dose and the more the recovery needed to have positive adaptations. Low intensity longer time stresses too but differently.
Cycling an hour or so at moderate level of perceived exertion is doable without too much stress to the system for even very casual cyclists. It causes good cardiorespiratory fitness response and adds to lots of calories burned.
Running similar calorie outputs will come with more stress and more recovery required.
But given a distance X, the faster you go the less time you spend fighting those resistances.
Energy used is force times distance. If you’re going the same distance, but with more air resistance, you’ll need more energy (i.e., burn more Calories).
Having a hard time articulating this question but I’m going to try.
Are there also relatively fixed sunk cost inefficiencies at low cycling speeds? At low speeds some energy is used that is not related to forward propulsion, just maintaining balance etc.
I see this more apparent with walking vs jogging. Air resistance is not a significant factor there but the relative efficacy of calories into forward movement is.
I’m not convinced that even on a stationary bike that X fictive miles covered at a slow rate and a fast rate would result in the same carefully measured calories burned. My suspicion is that there is a cadence and force relation that we are most efficient at and that above or below both would result in more calories per distance traveled all else kept equal.
Air resistance goes up by the square of the speed increase. Go 2X as fast, face 4X air resistance.
The big difference is that when you walk or run, you’re still supporting your own weight. On a bicycle, the bike supports you.
Thanks. I’m actually surprised that biking was able to burn 50% the calories of running over the same time. I was also asking about the overall cardio effect, effect on the body, etc. but in a very rule of thumb way.
The bicycle itself is very efficient for that sort of thing. I would expect that most such inefficiencies would be in the human body, but you’d want a physiologist, not a physicist, to answer that one.
Well, at extremely slow speeds, the bike’s balancing won’t be very efficient, but that’s much slower than even an out-of-shape person trying to get in shape would usually be going.
I would as well: the human machine does work with the same efficiency doing similar activities at different speeds.
For example see below for efficiency at walking different speed and then the transition to running.
Of very interesting to note is the nadir in calories expended per mile at walking about 3.5 mph and how very much more trying to run at that rate expends.
Makes me realize how stupid I was when I did my one marathon, committed at mile 21 to running the whole way even though I was making no headway on the guy walking a bit in front of me. That slow run was the worst choice possible!
I was comparing different speeds of bicycling against each other, not against walking or running.
Another factor in running v. cyling is that even running over favorable terrain, you’ve still got to do the work of moving yourself forward. It may be easier going downhill than uphill, but you can never coast. But on a bicycle, you can coast while going down very slight slopes.
Just one anecdatum: there have been times in recent years when I’ve run a mile every other day. Exercising doesn’t do nearly as much in terms of weight control/loss as diet does, unless you’re getting towards the extreme range of exercising. But it certainly appeared that that three miles a week was helping to nudge my scale numbers downwards.
Bicycling OTOH is something I’ve done a great deal of, and all those 20-40 mile rides never seemed to result in any weight change at all. (That didn’t bother me - I bike because I love the way it feels, not for any external benefit. But just saying.)
I see, thanks. Fortunately, at 160 pounds, I don’t have much, if any, weight that needs to be lost. I do need to get my high blood sugar down and improve in a dozen other ways though.
I’m sure jogging leads to better bone density and is more hardcore (in a good way) than biking; it’s just the heat and the concrete-surface stuff that makes biking easier on the body, for now.
Once summer/autumn blows by and Texas can finally know what a livable temperature feels like again around winter, I may take up running.
Maybe swimming?
So there is a very large body of research trying to determine which modality or combination of modalities is most effective at improving insulin resistance …Cardio? Which form? What time of day? Strength training? How much how often? HIIT? All of above?
Their answer though is very very clear: the best form of exercise is the one you’ll do, regularly!
Cycling is great! And again most can cycle longer than they can run. (Always helmet I assume?) Adding in some strength training once or twice a week and/or some HIIT maybe (okay probably) even better. But not skipping too many days in a row and avoiding prolonged sedentary periods is by far the bulk of the benefit.
That’s interesting as you clearly appreciate that is not many calories burned or even needed in recovery. I gotta wonder if your appetite somehow gets impacted as the result of doing an activity that you are less accustomed to (while you are well adapted to cycling) …
I can say for sure that I didn’t lose my Freshman 30 until I started commuting by bike.
Well, OK, I never completely lost it. But I lost most of it.