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May 21, 2021 03:30 am

E-Bikes Can Provide a Good Workout

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Does riding an electric bike to work count as exercise, and not just a mode of transportation? It can, if you ride right, according to a pragmatic new study comparing the physiological effects of e-bikes and standard road bicycles during a simulated commute. The study, which involved riders new to e-cycling, found that most could complete their commutes faster and with less effort on e-bikes than standard bicycles, while elevating their breathing and heart rates enough to get a meaningful workout. But the benefits varied and depended, to some extent, on how people's bikes were adjusted and how they adjusted to the bikes. The findings have particular relevance at the moment, as pandemic restrictions loosen and offices reopen, and many of us consider options other than packed trains to move ourselves from our homes to elsewhere. So, for the new study, which was published in March in the Translational Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, researchers at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, decided to ask inexperienced cyclists to faux commute. To do so, they recruited 30 local men and women, aged 19 to 61, and invited them to the physiology lab to check their fitness levels, along with their current attitudes about e-bikes and commuting. Then, they equipped each volunteer with a standard road bike and an e-bike and asked them to commute on each bike at their preferred pace for three miles, a distance the scientists considered typical for bike commutes in America. The cyclists pedaled around a flat loop course, once on the road bikes and twice with the e-bike. On one of these rides, their bike was set to a low level of pedal assistance, and on the other, the oomph was upped until the motor sent more than 200 watts of power to the pedals. Throughout, the commuters wore timers, heart rate monitors and facial masks to measure their oxygen consumption. Afterward, to no one's surprise, the scientists found that the motorized bikes were zippy. On e-bikes, at either assistance level, riders covered the three miles several minutes faster than on the standard bike -- about 11 or 12 minutes on an e-bike, on average, compared to about 14 minutes on a regular bike. They also reported that riding the e-bike felt easier. Even so, their heart rates and respiration generally rose enough for those commutes to qualify as moderate exercise, based on standard physiological benchmarks, the scientists decided, and should, over time, contribute to health and fitness. But the cyclists' results were not all uniform or constructive. A few riders' efforts, especially when they used the higher assistance setting on the e-bikes, were too physiologically mild to count as moderate exercise. Almost everyone also burned about 30 percent fewer calories while e-biking than road riding -- 344 to 422 calories, on average, on an e-bike, versus 505 calories on a regular bike -- which may be a consideration if someone is hoping to use bike commuting to help drop weight.

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