Stationary Bike vs Biking On-Road: Which burns more calories?
 

I've been riding both a stationary bike - especially in the winter months - and my various "road" bikes - which include a Trek 1,5 Alpha, a Surly Long Haul Trucker, a Surly Pugsley and a 1990 Gary Fisher Tassajara MTB. All my road rides include hills - there's no getting away from them where I live! I know I'm "burning up the calories" going up each hill, but once over the top and going down it's a "free ride" with almost no effort at all . I'm not into speed, so rather than powering downhill I'm more likely to be on the brakes. With the stationary bike, I can keep the resistance steady the entire workout - no "coasting". The question is, for a given time period, am I burning more calories on the stationary bike or riding my road bike up hill and coasting down. Comments?

Equal effort on both is equal effort.

You don't have to coast on the road...just keep pedaling.

Get a heart rate monitor if you want somethign to fix yourself to for added discipline, it will give you feedback on your cardio effort.

assuming you are working the same amount it should be the same... if you are just barely turning the cranks with virtually no resistance even for Hrs on end you aren't doing yourself any favors (I say this because I see if often in the gym)

the problem for me is stationary/trainers are so boring... put yourself on a good training plan for them doing intervals and such and the trainer will be much more beneficial... also you don't have traffic to worry about or lights... so pushing hard is much easier to do consistently...

that being said... with your stable it sounds like you should be set to ride outdoors no matter the weather...

Who cares, riding stationary bikes sucks.

+1 for the road. hills are like intervals. but in any case i know i am willing to suffer more out on the road rather than sit and sweat in place on a trainer or stationary. also short of the threat of death you wont keep me on a stationary for more than a half hour. sunday i rode with guys half my size for 5 hours and they push me to the breaking point. they almost broke me but i still stole two town line sprints from those elves :lol:

you get out what you put in. so if your working harder for the same volume for one over the other than you have your answer. if the hills are not killing you than go faster :thumb:.

just to reply to the basic premise/question: which ever leads to the best compliance. meaning which are you more likely to do/use.

it's harder to run or ride outside than inside on machines. yes, you can increase incline and resistance inside but I think the unpredictable nature of the environment adds a certain built in variance that adds intensity, and so also calorie burning ...

I have to concentrate really hard to keep putting out enough effort on a trainer to keep my HR above 120 for half an hour. On the road, it's hard to keep my HR below 140, and I can ride for hours.

So, if you expend the same effort, it should be the same Calories. But good luck expending the same effort!!!

I don't know anything about stationary bikes, but this line almost made me spit out my lunch :D

A trainer has the potential to burn more calories than riding outside for a given period of time spent. In the real world assuming you ride from point A to point B andthen have to return to point A you will always have a net zero climbing oraltitude change. On a trainer you can climb for your total workout and end up at the same place you started. In reality the outside factors like boredom and time on the bike not being the same are imposable to calculate from one personto the next. Someone in statistics would say your risk of injury is higher on a real road and the down time after being hurt would subtract from the total. You can’t calculate such things.

If you arean animal and can ride climbing nonstop at your max output and as you wear out lower your output level to your new max and ride till you can no longer a trainer will do more.

I personallywould rather ride 4 hours on the road compared to 1 hour on a trainer and I havea hard time also maxing my effort on a trainer, so I think I burn more cals on the road.

I use the speedometer and cadence meter more on the trainer than on the road. I have a heart rate monitor that I've hooked up occasionally, but overall if I start out in a relatively high resistance on the trainer and keep up 16-18mph average for an hour (with intervals), I'll burn about as much as my outside 22 mile 1hr:20min workout.

Inside I blow a big fan on me to cool off and stand occasionally whether I need it or not. To pass the time I listen to music and watch closed caption TV. It's still boring, but not as boring. I'd rather be outside, but not in January.

I use Spinervals DVD's for my Spin Bike rides, and I know for sure I burn more calories per hour. But I sure like riding outdoors more, weather permitting. I do thank God I have the spin bike for the winter though. Before I got it, when spring rolled around I was so out of shape biking wise (I did work out all winter, just not biking).

I have my spin bike set up almost exactly like my bicycles. Same pedals, seat, and all the measurements.

Normal rides < bike trainer < actual climbs

I'm too lazy and I end up coasting on normal rides, but I found that I work a lot harder on hills than when I do intervals on my trainer. I think it's because whenever I do intervals on my trainer all I think about is how tiring it is, whereas if I'm actually doing a climb I can look at the scenery and such.

When I had my knee injury I stayed away from cycling for a long time and yet because of my weak knees cycling was the only form of exercise I could do other than swimming or something like that. I didn't want to risk cycling outside so I used a stationary bike. Combined with dieting I've had very successful results. Now I am back to cycling outside but still the fear is there and I don't want to do anything risky.

Depends on the effort and the duration of the effort

I've looked at my data for trainer sessions where I knew I was doing intervals (Sufferfest Blender video) and for hard rides where I was on it the entire time. I burn far more on my hard rides, up to 17kJ per minute, than I do on a trainer which was 10kJ per minute for that specific session.

Can I keep up the pace of my hard rides for as long as I do a Sufferfest video? Not a chance although I'd sure love to be able to.

At 17kJ per min I'm done after 40 minutes or so.
10kJ per minute and that's a 4 hour metric that only has 5800' of elevation gain (88'/mi)

Get a fixed gear bike if you want a good workout with no coasting allowed.

This

For me the answer is easy.

Stationary bike = work out for 30 minutes, get bored, get off and do something else.
Real bike = bike an hour, realise "omg an hour has gone by already!", then either bike back home or go even further.


Real bike burns more calories, every time.

The other thing is, if you're on a stationary bike and you get bored, you can hop off go watch TV. If you're on the road and you get bored, you still have to get home some how. Last night, the last 6 miles of the 20 I rode were all into a headwind. That sucked. But I still had to get back to the car!

With a stationary bike though if you ever feel like working out even in the middle of the night you can just hop on. Right after you can go to bed. And also you don't have to worry about having to slow down because people are around. It would be good to have both. If I had to choose only one I'd go with a real bike but only cause it's more fun, if my objective was to only lose weight I would want a stationary bike. But stationary bikes that can take a lot of weight can be quite costly.

I can see me trying that on some of the hills here.
Rip my legs clean off and I'd then be the Black Knight in Monty Python Holy Grail :lol:

It all depends on how hard you ride the stationary bike and how hard you ride the road bike. The amount of time going down hill should be very small compared to the total ride time.

Exactly! Let's say I'm going to climb up a pretty good hill. It's a mile to the top, and really exerting myself, I average 5mph. Using V=D/T (velocity = distance / time), at my average speed of 5mph, it would take me 12 minutes to reach the top. So that's 12 minutes of hard exertion. On the return, it's all down hill, and lets say I'm spinning about as fast as I dare and average 30mph. Using the same formula, the "down" trip will take just 2 minutes and being "gravity assisted, the effort isn't nearly as much. So using this token example, for every hill climbed I spend 12 of 14 minutes straining uphill! I guess the old adage is true then - "Going downhill never makes up for climbing uphill"!
;)

Agreed, riding outside keeps me moving for longer periods of time so it naturally burns more calories. The most I can stand stationary is 40 minutes.

I'm good for half that LOL and even half of that if talking gym bike

+1, and I don't think I would work as hard on a stationary bike.

I'd never make it up the hills!:lol:

Stationary bike? Are we talking about a spin bike or one of those lifecycle things? On a spin bike I'll do epic workouts, pretty hard to replicate on a road bike. And, I don't want to be 30 miles from home puking and rubber legged on my road bike, red-lining on a spin bike is a whole lot safer...

Funny, one of the gyms I belonged to had pitch black spin room with HD projection system on one wall playing road and mountain training rides. Nice production values. It was very motivating, but disorienting and vertigo inducing. I kept trying to lean the spin bike, bunny hop. That didn't work too well...

I have to believe there's a slight edge to the "real thing" and I have an exercise bike in my living room. However I think it's a much more important factor that for most people, me included it's terribly difficult to get, or stay motivated to ride an indoor bike, be it a trainer or standalone or whatever. I hate stationary bikes and I hate riding them, only by convincing myself i'm doing it to make my actual fun bicycle riding outside better, and only incidentally it will help me get in shape or stay in shape can I force myself to spend any time on the indoor bike.

Of course as others have pointed out if you can make yourself ride away from home for one hour, then you've assured a two hour ride. On an indoor bike you can stop at any time to fidget with the TV or radio or check your e-mail or whatever. About the only advantage for the indoor bike is that I'll get off and clean the house.

I used to hate stationary bikes, thought they were the biggest waste of time ever. But then I realized I loved doing sprints on my real bike but also wished I could do sprints whenever I wanted, but that's not the case because of obstacles that pop up. So I gave the stationary bike a try and realized how fun it was to do intervals for a whole hour. I was so sweaty, that 2 asian girls were laughing at the puddles I made on the floor. So I ordered some wrist bands to try to absorb some of the sweat. I literally just go all out and do tons of sprints now on the stationary bike. Weird because I used to be against stationary bikes.

It's not boring at all. The time goes by fast. You can either listen to music, or listen to tv at the gym, or you can do what I do and download the Motion Traxx app. Motion Traxx is an app that has trainers that push you while you listen to fresh beats. It's only about 4 bucks a month. So I feel like I really found something with the stationary bike at the gym. The elliptical is nice too if you use it with the Motion Traxx app and go really really hard. I sweat multiple puddles on the floor.

I used to think stationary bike was stupid and typically couldn't last more than 20 minutes due to boredom. Another key thing is I literally PRETEND in my mind that I am outside while I sprint. It is really fun if you're open minded.

I remember when I was in high school and this kid was in Spandex and was on his bike trainer. Everyone laughed at him. I asked him why he's not just riding his bike around campus and he told me that his trainer allowed him to train exactly how he wanted. Since then I never really tried doing a bike stationary until the last couple of weeks. I highly recommend it. I am willing to go as far as to say that for the first hour it's even funner than riding outside. It gets you sweating even faster. After more than a couple hours though it's probably funner to be outside.

But again, visualizing that you are outside works really well. The reason I like this type of training is because I can work hard whenever I want. I don't have to turn, go downhill, watch out for potholes, etc.. Now I will admit that going up a real hill beats turning up the resistance on the machine. You work more muscles and that's why I think doing both is still necessary. I rode outside a couple of hours earlier today and later tonight I play to use the stationary bike and I can't tell you how fun it is. I work harder than everyone else at the gym who just goes easy on the stationary bikes. Again, the trick is to do lots of intervals and literally pretend you are outside. Don't just ride it for exercise, actually have fun with it and look at it as a tool.

Inside with no coasting. Outside I seem to spend 10-25% of my time at zero power output waiting for traffic, descending, cornering, etc. so for the same wall-clock time I'd burn significantly more Calories inside.

Past a point you can't make up for that by riding harder because it's disproportionately fatiguing, and on endurance days you wouldn't want to because you'd prefer to stay below your aerobic threshold to improve your slow twitch fibers and oxidative energy system.

OTOH I run out of patience within 2 hours inside and 1.5 is the best I can do on an ongoing basis. Outside I enjoy unsupported solo rides past 200 miles and with more sleep should do fine on a 400k which takes over 24 hours due to mountains.

I did switch to riding intervals indoors after my crash, which was during a short work day endurance ride.