Indoor Cycling Vs Outdoor Cycling: Which is the Better Workout?

Indoor Cycling Vs Outdoor Cycling: Which is the Better Workout?

Have you ever been in a cycling class or walked by the stationary bikes at the gym and wondered whether they give you as good (or better) of a workout as riding a bike outdoors? Youre about to find out in this comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of outdoor and indoor cycling.

And my personal opinion? Both are better!

Convenience

Indoor Cycling: It is easy to hop on a spinning bike (or your own bike and a trainer) and go! No worries about rain, temperature, wind, potholes, cars, or dogs. Bam! You get a great workout done in 60 90 minutes.

Outdoor Cycling: Outdoor cycling can be logistically messy. You need to dress appropriately, bring a tire change (and know how to change a tire), be ready for rough weather, deal with stop lights, stop signs and traffic, and the list goes on. Then again, a bike sitting in your garage is more accessible than a indoor bike you need to drive to the gym to access.

Control

Indoor Cycling: You are in control of how hard your ride inside. You control your intensity by choosing how much tension to put on the knob or which selecting an easier or harder gear. If you want to back it off, you can. If you want to increase it you can.

Outdoor Cycling:Unlike your ride inside, you cant control everything about your outdoor ride. Of course you can pick your route, but there are plenty of variables along the way. When you get to a hill, you climb the hill. When you are on the flats with a headwind, you power through it. If it starts raining, you deal with it. You just have to be ready for everything and this makes life exciting.

Enjoyment

Indoor Cycling: Its a little hard to be social outdoors because you normally have to ride single file to be safe plus wind and road noise make it hard to hear each other . With indoor cycling you have the camaraderie of your group (you are all in this together!), instructions by your coach (so you dont even have to think about what comes next), with support and enthusiasm from everyone.

Outdoor Cycling: Riding outdoor is different than indoor no matter how much you prepare for it inside. For one thing, the bike moves under you instead you moving over the bike. This is nice because, if you are standing, you can use the handlebars to help you generate more power and keep your body relatively still while your bike rocks side to side.

Also, the angle that you are on your bike changes based on the grade of the hill. The steeper the hill the more forward your position will be.And the hill ends when the hill ends, not when you want to ease up (that you can sneakily do in spin class).FitnessIndoor Cycling:A study by the American Council On Exercise (ACE) observed that a typical cycling class keeps you at around 75 to 95 percent of your maximum heart rate. Thats pretty good. Big motivators might be the heat of an indoor cycling room, the peer pressure of cycling classmates and the motivation of an instructor barking orders in your face, but regardless, its a good enough heart rate to get a very good cardiovascular response. However, as youve just learned, indoor cycling bikes tends to use primarily your hamstring muscles because of that fly-wheel, which means more help from the bike and fewer overall calories burned.Outdoor Cycling:Serious cyclists and professional cyclists can easily get their heart rate as high and higher as those in a cycling class. But most recreational cyclists just have a hard time pedaling that fast while balancing the bike, navigating, and not having the motivation of a crowd and an instructor. In contrast to an indoor bike, you use your glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps, shins and calves more when youre on a bike outside so your muscular fitness will likely be higher if you dont spend much of your time "cruising." But once again, you need to be working hard enough to hit those muscles with adequate force to make them stronger and to burn significant calories, and many people just dont ride a bike that hard.