People always point out the irony of driving to a gym to ride a stationary bike. But one of the primary reasons people do it is because they don’t feel safe riding bikes on the road with all the cars. Its an onion of irony.
Another thing people seem to forget is that with an exercise bike you can stop whenever you want and be in a place of safety. Knee pain in the middle of the road? Yeah, no thanks.
What fascinating about exercise bike is it train you indoor so you can take on outdoor long distance cycling. It doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive and i hate conversation like this.
Also bike isn’t only meant for exercise, you can go to the store or run errands with it if distance allow.
And you don’t have to worry about emergency repairs.
No? If I am biking in a separated bike lane, I can stop and move over onto the sidewalk where I am not in anyone’s way. But IMO you should not be getting injured just trying to pedal a bike, maybe something like an ebike would reduce the physical excursion needed to pedal, reducing injury.
But IMO you should not be getting injured just trying to pedal a bike
Oh, to be that young again…
you should not be getting injured just trying to pedal a bike
Oh how I wish that were true
if you somehow sprain an ankle suffer a skinned knee you still need to bike back because you don’t have a car with you.
Biking for transit also isn’t much of a workout if you’re relatively fit. There’s a cap to how fast you can go before it becomes dangerous because of obstacles and limited reaction time.
And also not wanting to show up at work a sweaty, disgusting mess because you decided to do threshold intervals on the way to work
Although i’ve been told that it’s normal for dutch people to show up at work meetings in various states of wetness like rain or sweat
I’m lucky that despite living in a car centric Texas suburb, there are tons of of bike paths, and quiet neighborhood streets to get a workout ride on. Commuting by bike is currently not viable, but a new commuter rail line is opening next year that might make it work for me.
right but it’s comparable to the type of cycling that the grand majority of people do on the bikes at gyms
which, to be fair, is often because that’s a warmup/cooldown activity at the gym. but there are people who go and just cycle at a low moderate pace and then drive home.
Indoor biking isn’t much of a workout either to be fair.
It’s one of those things that seeped into the public mind as part of going to the gym. Whereas you can get the same or better cardio while lifting weights that also builds your muscles, while indoor bike is imo just a meh, or borderline the “lazy” choice realistically for a lot of people.
It’s what you do when you don’t want to run because that’s hard, and the elliptical is too hard because that actually hits the whole body.
Ofc this is a generalization of the majority, individuals can still use it to great effect, but imo, meh.
The cheapest treadmills and ellipticals are a lot more expensive than the cheapest exercise bikes. They take up more room, too (especially the treadmills.)
Of course, I’m talking about exercising at home here rather than going to the gym, but it’s worth pointing out regardless.
Whereas you can get the same or better cardio while lifting weights that also builds your muscles
This is just blatantly false - same or better cardio from lifting weights? You’d have to be pedaling extremely lightly for this to be true.
No you just actually have to lift weights, superset and not wander around aimlessly at the gym or look at your phone.
This one will absolutely wreck you cardio wise https://youtu.be/cClSiXBNGa8
Right, so I do a 5/3/1 with a circuit of assistance work with essentially no downtime apart from switching out the weights. It’s challenging, and it builds my strength, but I don’t think anyone with any serious amount of experience doing cardio-focused exercise could with a straight face say that they are comparable. High zone 2/low zone 3 maybe, but not comparable in volume to a long run/ride nor comparable to HIIT sessions either.
If lifting weights is seriously that taxing for you cardio-wise, you may need to get out and actually stress your cardiovascular system
so by the exact same reasoning you have to actually be putting out high watts and not just casually cycling
Naw, bad take. I hate spinning, but it absolutely can be a solid workout.
Depends on what you mean by workout, for me it exclusively represents “stuff you do” for muscle building.
In that case it’s not a workout.
The same way me playing squash is not a workout.
okay but that’s just an issue with your narrow definition of workout lmao
Colloquially workout exclusively refers to strength/hypertrophy training, when someone asks “do you workout” they are not asking if you use a stationary bike.
There is workout, cardio,doing sports and training for a given sport.
Gonna need a citation on that. I’ve never heard a single other person define workout that way in any country I’ve ever been to
Not an expert but this certainly rings true for me, the bike is the one I go to if I’m too tired to do a real workout, because I get to sit down the whole time.
(edit: fuck me, sometimes it’s just not worth sharing, people are downvoting because I openly admitted that I’m not using a piece of gym equipment properly? Get over yourselves)
people suck
you can absolutely get a great workout in on the bike while not having to go through the effort and tax of moving equipment, racking/unracking etc
just have a seat and go as hard or as light as you want, with the ability to instantly change intensity in response to how you feel. no need to think - just sit there with your head down and pedal hard
It’s almost like people intentionally misunderstand things. that, or they simply don’t have the experience and so weigh in on things that they don’t know about
however that person’s comment that indoor biking isn’t much of a workout is just blatantly false. It’s as much of a workout as you want it to be. People just don’t know what it feels like to be holding hundreds of watts for a long time, and that that’s what’s required for a solid workout
There’s way too much gatekeeping going on here. Your light bike workout on a bad day is as much of a workout as a high intensity treadmill run on a good day. Both are very much proper usages of gym equipment. Doing something suboptimal is always better than doing nothing.
I rarely use the bike these days but generally if you’re using a stationary bike for exercise, you shouldn’t be sitting the whole time.
sure, but it’s like the person I replied to said, it’s a generalization, that I happen to fit into. If I want a proper workout I go to the treadmill.
That’s you using the speed of the treadmill as a crutch for intensity. Peloton exists to fill this need for spinning.
If you’re fit, then cycling will ensure you stay fit. If you don’t have to strain yourself, that’s a plus. It’s supposed to be fun commute, not a challenge.
If you want to workout, go the long way?
I think that person is saying that street biking requires a lot of slowing and stopping cause we invented cars then immediately had to invent traffic lights. I’m lucky in that I can stay at a decent speed for like 30% of my commute and even that doesn’t really feel like a workout.
Going the ‘long way’ increases the time not the load, and it’s the load that’s missing.
That’s fair, but on the other hand, accelerating requires more energy than maintaining speed.
My bike route is down canals and the river to the local nature reserve and then back again.
Fuck riding on the roads, I’ve seen how these pricks drive. They barely look out for other cars.
And AC. It was 105 heat index out the other day here. I biked outside but it was awful and dangerous.
Yeah going try ride my bike to work tomorrow. Only six minute by bike vs 3 by car. Trying to save on gas, but will miss the AC it freaking hot here. Luckily have AC at work. But it’s starting to cool down here, but not by much.
I mean for me it’s comfort, I don’t want to bike in the rain, or high heat, or snow… If you do then awesome that’s great. So instead i just reduced my car footprint. Drive a smart fortwo which is one of the least polluting cars on the road and you can fit 2-3 into a standard parking spot (depending on orientation)
i know I’m in the wrong place for this but I wish people would focus on just trying to make people realize that they don’t need so much car instead of fuck car entirely. It is much more likely to be a successful message in the long run and still beneficial
IMHO most people here are for systemic change that internalizes the external cost of pollution, and building better transportation infrastructure. Not pointing fingers at individual working-class people.
you are not in the wrong for this
you are making a responsible choice given your options
it’s not about cutting out entirely, it’s about minimizing where possible
Same. It often gets to 45°C where i live. No fuckign way I am walking in that. I’ll get heat stroke.
I will give you high heat sucks, though 110 heat index isnt terrible when youre moving fast, but it takes 30 seconds to throw on some rain gear, Ive even seen people do it at a stoplight.
Putting on raingear, while less miserable than not being in rain gear. Does not entirely save one from the annoyance and wetness of the rain. I did a LOT of biking in my teens in all conditions… I’m familiar with it lol
Yeah unless it’s an absolute downpour I tend to prefer the rain wet over the sweaty under the rain gear wet. I totally get how people are not into that. Which is why we need more trains/busses too
What exactly is the point in covering the front of the bikes there? Some of those look dangerously close to getting caught on their tires.
Keeps your legs dry at speed and protects if the bike next to you splashes.
Honestly these are the kind of things we need to share more: tips for dealing with common problems that make biking inconvenient. Seeing how other people handle rainy weather is a great example.
Those look to be motorbikes so I’m not sure it 100% transfers, but… where does one get such a thing?
IDK. A nice one with good material and a window for the headlight is ~4USD on at a random store or on shop.ee. The ones I see on Amazon are much more expensive.
Personally I use a normal split raincoat, because I can use it off the bike too, and use it on bicycles too.
I like to use my ebike as much as possible instead of driving. Ironically some people will say I’m “cheating” 😂 bitch, it’s replacing my car, not my bicycle!
Six months of every year being -40°C is a pretty compelling reason to want to be inside.
I live in the greatest state in America, New Jersey. We can hit 36+ in the summer with 100% humidity -16+(-?) in the winters, and this is exclusioning wet stuff. We can dislike the car machine without hating on gyms. And I don’t like gyms either, but c’mon.
I translated the temps into world, so bear with me folks.
I live in the greatest state in America, New Jersey.
Agreed
We can hit 36+ in the summer with 100% humidity -16+(-?) in the winters….
Hey! Ho! You don’t live in New Jersey using that unit of measurement.
I translated the temps into world, so bear with me folks.
Still sus on where you live. Let everyone else do their own conversions; this is New Jersey. Taylor Ham.
Ha, Lemmy’s softening me up, but you’re right, Fs for us and Fs for everyone else too.
This won’t do my credit any service, but I’ll take a BEC or SEC on a poppy bagel every day over P/THEC. I’m really not big on that particular meat.
I’m from Central Jersey if that makes it better.
No, Central Jersey makes you everyone’s enemy then! XD
Everyone knows central Jersey doesn’t exist
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Sounds American.
I think another part people are missing is that going to the gym is a social event. You see people there regularly, talk to friends, and do an activity together. It’s extremely healthy to have a group of people that you spend time with outside of the home and work.
Exactly this. It’s 10km to my gym, it’s two towns over. But there is no designated bike path so I’d have to drive on the road, getting passed by cars going 100kmh. The roads here are already lined with crosses for people who died there, I’d rather not have my family have to add one for me.
And weather
I do it, but that’s just because nature tries to face-fuck my sinus cavity (severe allergies)
Bill Bryson wrote of this upon his return to the US from the UK where he used to walk lots of places. How his wife’s friend drive 2.5miles to a heath club to walk 5miles on a walking machine, then drove 2.5 miles home.
Its probably a more enjoyable walk in the gym than walking to the gym because walking along stroads suck. They are loud, the air is polluted, there is a sense you need to be constantly alert, and all those factors passively stress humans out.
Thankfully I get my cardio climbing stairs up and down from the Metro, and rack up 10-15k steps per day. I live in a city.
Fuck whatever I used to do. Car culture contributes to societal and cultural division
I did used to feel odd back when I would bike to the gym, because I realized I was already a little tired by the time I got to the gym, but just sucked it up and figured it could only make me more healthy. For years I biked everywhere, work, school, hangouts etc . . .And some peers would complain about back pain or odd health problems, and I’m thinking well maybe an active life is worth all the effort.
You are so right! When they shut down all exercise during COVID-19, I slowly started feeling all these aches and pains other people constantly complain about. I though, “Oh, well, you are getting old…” Then six months after exercise restarted, I was my old self again.
I always went to the gym on my bike (10 km one-way). Perfect warm-up and cvool down. I’ve seen It’s true beyond believe. Only three biked and a full parkinglot. Everyone wants to park as close to the entry door as possible.
I’m all for biking if that’s your thing, but I’d rather take a subway, than to arrive at work all winded and sweaty, smelling like a locker room. Or, completely soaked because it was raining that day.
Subway is 100% fine, also needed for accessibility for people who can’t drive a bicycle. It’s the cars which suck.
Biking to work doesn’t make sense in every scenario, nor does it have to.
I guess it’s worth mentioning that the winded and sweaty-thing is really an infrastructural problem - if your workplace offers showers, you can alleviate this problem. I used to do that back when I lived 14 km from work.
I bike almost every day to work these days living around 5 km from work, but back when I lived 14 km from work I would stop biking to work during winter as the ride was a bit too painful and risky during that time, and I opted for bus+metro instead back then.
Currently I will sometimes choose another mode of transport (mostly train) or work from home if it’s raining very heavily or I’m planning to be drinking a not-insignificant amount of alcohol (rare these days).
If you arrive at work winded and sweaty from riding a bike, it means that your fitness level is low, and that you need to get in shape.
I doubt there’s any level of fitness that will keep you from being sweaty at 108°F with 80% humidity.
Global warming is worse than I knew now that that’s average daily conditions in most cities with a subway.
Who said anything about average?
Hey are you that guy in the middle of those bell curve memes?
Or, y’know, it’s hot outside.
Super anecdotally, I’ve been biking to work through the desert for years. 100F and up. You eventually get used to it. Bring a shit ton of water.
OK, yes drink lots of water, but… that does nothing for not wanting to arrive at work (or anywhere else) sweaty.
Even that decreases; I don’t break a sweat anymore. But it helps that I have work shirts and can bike slow.
“Decreases” is not good enough for any job where you have to be around and interact with other people (e.g. retail, food service, healthcare, education, any kind of office work, etc…).
It’s good enough if it decreases to the point where you no longer break a sweat!
I sweat extremely easy and a lot. I just today completed an Olympic length triathlon, so I’d say I’m in shape. It could be cool spring day outside, and I will sweat through a shirt if I were to ride for 20 min even at a leisurely pace on flat ground. Throw some hills in there and the shirt will be mostly wet with sweat.
Yeah, criticizing and judging me is not a great way to get me on your side.
And I’d also like to know, at what fitness level, a person can bike 7 miles to work in 105° weather with 80% humidity without getting sweaty and winded.
I have a life to live, which does not include spending huge massive time at a gym meeting your standards.
Hopefully this weather is not a year-long affair for you, because that sounds painful to live through. Dare I even say that humans were not meant to live in such a climate year-round
Mine, I guess? Winded after only 7 miles is pretty bad.
My schools gym is walking distance away from me. Its like 7-10 mins. I can’t get to it safely without a car because there is a 5 lane road (suicide lane in the middle) with cars speeding 50 in a 30 mph zone, no side walks, no stop lights.
It is one of the most demoralizing feelings in the world to use a car instead of cardio just to work out.
It’s 100 degrees in Texas right now. And exercising in AC is a lot better
I have family who live in southern Ontario who do this. They live in rural areas so they drive 1 hour to the gym, workout for half an hour and drive an hour back. I pointed out to them that in terms of cost, it would probably be cheaper to just invest in a home gym, treadmill and exercise bike and do everything at home.
Personally, my wife is sick with chronic illness so I can’t go anywhere any more. So I just invested in a good treadmill, set up a TV in front of it and watch all my shows just about every day while walking. An average show is about 45 min or an hour so I take that time to do my walk at home and never go anywhere. The cost of the treadmill paid off years ago.
Also, as another tip, buy your treadmill or exercise equipment in January / February. Everyone always buys exercise stuff for Christmas or New Years resolutions in December / November … then forget about it all after the holidays and sell stuff off or the stores put everything on sale. I bought a $1,000 treadmill like this about ten years ago for half the price and have used it since every year without problems.
Driving 2 hours to go to the gym is crazy
Tbh, they could just get a bike, bike there for an hour, turn around bike home and have much more exercise.
Get overrun by a car
Diving 80km away in a car is a lot faster than bicycling. It would take a couple hours or more on a bicycle.
It’s not the driving there … it’s the time spent going there.
If you just do everything at home and exercise for even an hour, you save yourself two hours on the road going anywhere.
Once you do that for a month, the money saved in travel, wasted time, gym membership and all associated costs … would more than pay for all the gym equipment you buy and set up at home. Plus you gain a whole bunch of hours in the day to do other things.
If you don’t need to get to the gym because you already got your exercise cycling, does it matter whether you get there within that hour?
I could not fathom driving a hour to gym. Convenience is key, to me. I live three blocks from my gym, but I only use it when the weather precludes me from running outside of doors, which is rare. I have a small window within to exercise, and I’m looking for any excuse to not do it, and so two hours of travel is such an easy excuse.
That being said, I live in Jersey, and to me, a drive beyond 30 minutes needs to really be a worthwhile destination, so it definitely matters where you’re from. I visited some friends in Montana and the joke was that everything is two hours away. Wanna climb? Two hours. Float? Two hours. Airport? Obviously, two hours.
lol … this is Canada and in rural southern Ontario in farm country by default, everything is one hour away.
I live in far northern Ontario about an hour for any major city - a convenience store and a pizza joint is five minutes away - everything else is two hours away. Away from the cities in Canada, we measure distance by time … we don’t measure in miles or kilometers, we usually measure distance by the hour.
I ride my stationary bike at home. It was always the stupidest feeling for me to drive to a car park just so i could workout
Edit: I’ll add if you have a bike already, they make basic stationary trainers for relatively cheap that you can attach your rear wheel to. Sometimes called bike training stands, they come in three styles:
- Wind (less common these days)
- magnetic (usually adjustable)
- fluid (more roadlike feel)
They can be between $30-100. And then if you end up liking it then they also have smart trainers that are even better but expensive up front.
For the bike trainer stands then if you like it get a training tire which is more durable than standard tires. And you’re also going to want to find any fan and point it at you while working out.
If you miss the social aspect there are some apps like zwift, rouvy, etc that let you ride virtually with other people though $, and you’d also need some relatively cheap speed/cadence sensor hardware on your bike to send your speed/ cadence to send to those apps (this is not needed with a smart trainer). Because i hate extra subscriptions, I just watch TV or read a book (can be hard during a harder workout).
There’s a lot more i could say but basically i started with a 30 year old bike on a cheap magnetic trainer. It wasn’t the nicest set up in the world but it worked, and eventually i realized i liked it enough to just cut my gym free and save up for a nicer set up.
I like what I see here, I think I’ll give this a try at home too. What’s on your setup these days? Would you recommend magnetic for someone trying it out the first time?
My set up moved to a $1000 smart trainer about 12 years ago that i used almost daily for 10 years. Past few years I alternate with rowing just because i am trying to work out my upper body too
As far a which type to get though, this article has a chart comparing them (edit: electromagnetic is a “smart trainer”).
if i were starting again i probably would do a fluid trainer since its the most road-like feel without going into smart trainers which can range from $400-1500. The road-like feel just makes it more enjoyable and the fluid trainers have come down in price since i first started
I had a colleague like that. It was a bit ironic because he’s the type of person that wants to be perceived as manly, but he was going to run on treadmills at the gym. He said the gym alwas had the same climate and he didn’t need to run in the cold or in the rain, which is true.
But then the pandemic hit so he started running outside year round and got used to it.
TBF he sounds actually manly
I take my car to the gym twice per week, because I’m covered in sweat when I go home and every soft breeze feels like an arctic storm. That’s 50% of my weekly car usage though.
I don’t get this. Did someone try to use AI to make fun of bicyclists that choose gym bikes? And then you posted it in @fuckcars?
It clearly depicts people driving to the gym only to get on an indoor bike.
Seriously, wtf is wrong with you clowns who are on the internet, but scream, “ai!!!”, like terrified 3 year olds at stuff that CLEARLY ISN’T AI!!!. There are Websites where you don’t look dumb!
Also, thanks for your content:
While I get your point AI detection websites are not a solution.
If AI (or any algorithm for that matter) could actually detect AI created images properly, the very same AI could produce images not showing the markers it used to detect them.
It’s the Dunning-Kruger base idea about metacognition all over again, just not for humans this time.
