MPH and RPM vs Resistence

Ride4Yellow said:

When I use the online calorie calculators they show I would be burning 650-850 calories.

If by this you mean you calculate the caloric expenditure for a real bike ride of equivalent distance and speed and compare it to the stationary bike at the gym, then there really is no comparison. Ordinary stationary exercise bikes in gyms don't try to model the real power levels (and therefore caloric burn) of real world cycling conditions. Furthermore, most of them, unless they have the feature and are put into "race mode," always adjust their resistance so the exerciser burns the same amount of calories per hour independent of cadence (i.e. RPM). They automatically decrease the resistance if you increase your cadence and increase the resistance if you lower your cadence to keep the amount of work you're doing per hour the same, based on the intensity level you chose.

Bottom line is don't worry about correlating calories, etc., to real life cycling calculators. If your goal is to build endurance, you need to be on the exercise bike for an hour or so. The first couple of times you do this, you may find out that you're choosing an intensity that's too difficult to complete the workout or too easy that you're not getting enough of a workout. Adjust your levels gradually and you'll arrive at a place where you'll know what intensity level on that particular exercise bike corresponds to the way you feel on a real endurance ride on a bike.

Finally, if the exercise bike has a power (Watts or W) display, you may have some luck correlating your intensity level with real world cycling. Before I got a trainer for my bike, I used to ride on the LifeCycle bikes in my local gym and I thought the power measurement was within 15% of the power I would generate on a bike (the stationary bike was usually a bit more optimistic, indicating higher power level).

Berend

Thanks for the info - The Bike I use does display Watts, Mets (not sure what that is) along with having multiple sworkout settings they include Weightloss, Random, Intervals and Hills. So how many watts do you think I should target for an hour long ride?

Quoted post said:

Finally, if the exercise bike has a power (Watts or W) display, you may have some luck correlating your intensity level with real world cycling. Before I got a trainer for my bike, I used to ride on the LifeCycle bikes in my local gym and I thought the power measurement was within 15% of the power I would generate on a bike (the stationary bike was usually a bit more optimistic, indicating higher power level).

Berend

Ride4Yellow said:

Thanks for the info - The Bike I use does display Watts, Mets (not sure what that is) along with having multiple sworkout settings they include Weightloss, Random, Intervals and Hills. So how many watts do you think I should target for an hour long ride?

Mets is Metabolic Equivalents - a unit used to measure exercise intensity. The idea is that Mets=1 is just your base metabolic rate (ie at rest) and exercising at Mets=x means you are burning calories at a rate x times greater than at rest. It's not the most useful measure of exercise intensity in the world quite frankly, it's used in some scientific papers but I wouldn't worry about it too much.

You should target a wattage for your hour long ride that is not quite achieveable yet but seems realistic for the near future. When you achieve it, reevaluate your target based on the same principle. Repeat this enough times and eventually you'll win the Olympics :-)

Seriously the absolute value is not relevant. Just aim for an intensity that is hard work but not really painful. You should be able to talk but not be keen for a conversation. By the end you should be glad it's finished but able to do another half an hour if someone put a gun to your head.