Are Electric Bikes Good For Fitness And Weight Loss?
Cycling is one of the best ways to lose weight and regain fitness. It offers a variety of useful exercises, including aerobics, cardiovascular, and leg muscle workout. But when you mention cycling; the first thing that comes to mind is traditional pedal bicycling.
Few people will take it to mean electric biking; and for the skeptics, there is no way an electric bike can be used for exercising. After all, aren’t you getting all the help from the electric motor?
Well…not quite!
So, are electric bikes good for fitness and weight loss?
Electric bikes can be just as effective as a pedal bike when it comes to working out. In fact, research suggests that they can even offer more exercise. E-bikes can surely be used to lose weight and return to fitness.
This is because they merely assist the pedaling effort of the rider (unless in throttle mode) but don’t carry the whole riding load. They allow the rider to maintain stamina over a longer duration compared to traditional bikes, which results in more calories getting burned and subsequent loss of weight.
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Exercising With An Electric Bike
While some conservative cyclists believe that riding an electric bike is “cheating”, there’s actually a lot of benefits that come with doing this. Some of the workouts you put in while riding an e-bike include:
E-biking As Cardio Exercise
Cycling is a common and reliable form of cardio exercise. Cardio refers to any kind of low or high-intensity activity that increases your heart rate. While there will always be a concern about e-bikes’ effectiveness relative to riding a conventional bike, studies have revealed that electric biking is just as efficient as its traditional counterpart.
How Many Calories Are Burned During E-biking?
On average, a person burns around 552 calories when cycling on a regular bike for one hour. However, if he rides an electric bike for the same period, he burns 442 calories of energy. You’ll lose more calories riding a regular bike, but you won’t do too bad with an electric bike.
While you get to burn 20% fewer calories, the catch with electric bikes is that you get pedaling assistance, which allows you to ride for longer and maintain the exercise longer. In the end, you’ll find yourself losing more calories on an e-bike than on a regular bicycle.
E-biking As Strength And Endurance Training Exercise
Strength and endurance training focuses on strengthening a variety of functions in the body to boost your overall body health. E-biking has proven to be beneficial for both strength and endurance training.
Endurance training not only improves the health of the heart and lungs but also enhances overall body fitness. It is particularly associated with the toning of the body. You can use your e-bike for endurance training by going on low-intensity jaunts for a long, steady pace or opt for high-intensity rides paired with interval training.
On the other hand, strength training builds your muscles by using resistance against your muscles. It can be compared to using weights or weight-bearing machinery such as deadlifts, free weights, kettlebells, etc.
Riding a fat electric bike may not be a weight-bearing activity, but cyclists can utilize gear resistance for strength training, with the focus being on the muscles of the legs, i.e. calves, hamstrings, quads, feet. It also engages other parts of the body like the biceps, triceps, core, and shoulders.
The benefits resulting from strength training include everything from increased muscle, bone, and ligament strength to improved cardiac function and metabolism.
E-biking As A Way To Lose Belly Fat
Getting a flat tummy is a goal that many people tend to work towards. However, this can seem like a long shot when you’re struggling with obesity. Lucking riding a bike might just offer a shortcut to getting there. So, can an e-bike help you lose belly fat?
Well, as earlier noted, cycling happens to be an effective cardio exercise, and cardio exercises help to boost body metabolism. This implies that when you do regular aerobic or cardio exercise, your body reacts by burning more calories and, hence, belly fat; more specifically visceral fat!
Adopting a fitness regime that combines both low-intensity rides and high-intensity training tends to offer the best results if you have your sights on losing body fat. As such, you might want to consider a workout that blends both kinds of rides.
Which Muscles Does E-biking Work?
While riding an electric bike, several muscles within your body are engaged. While some muscles are worked to a greater extent compared to others, your whole body still benefits from the exercise.
Your leg muscles are some of the most used when riding a bike, which means they benefit the most from the workout. Electric biking also engages the thighs, which encompass your hamstring and quadricep muscles, as well as calves, which feature the soleus and gastrocnemius muscles.
Final Thought
It is now clear that riding an electric bike comes with a variety of fitness-related benefits. Whether you’re riding the bike for strength training, to boost your body metabolism or as cardio exercise, you can certainly regain your fitness or lose weight when you start to consistently ride an electric bike.
Last Updated on November 23, 2020
