For fitness's sake, is it better to ride with low cadence in high gear or higher cadence in medium gear?

Question

I've started riding to get fit and lose weight. As part of that, I set little challenges for myself, eg: "I'm going to ride these next two blocks as quickly as possible in the highest gear". I'd be pedaling slowly and strenuously but moving quickly. As I got more fit I would spend by far the greater part of my 20klm daily ride in the highest gear.

However, someone at the bike shop where I get repairs mentioned I was doing it wrong - that I should be aiming for higher cadence and only use the top gears when going down hill.

What's better solely for losing weight?

Answer 1

All things being equal, aerobic exercise is probably best for losing weight (after all, the only way to lose weight is to breathe CO₂ out your nose). If you use too high a gear, you might be less aerobic and more resistance training, which builds muscle mass.

Either way, at this point, it sounds like getting yourself moving in whatever way you like will be most effective.

Answer 2

In terms of losing weight immediately, the obvious answer is to use whatever gear combo allows you to produce the greatest energy output. For most people this will likely be a hair lower than the "preferred" range of about 70-90 RPM -- maybe 50-60, and pedaling as hard as you can.

However, if you want to KEEP losing weight by getting on the bike again tomorrow (or even just later this afternoon) then you should avoid muscle and joint injury by running at a higher RPM (70-90) and not being quite so extreme in terms of putting out effort.

And one should consider doing "intervals" of alternating high effort and low effort (eg, 5 minutes high, 10 lower), as studies have shown that this produces both better weight loss and better muscle building.

Answer 3

Your cadence is not important for fitnes. Your distance is.

tl;dr;

In terms of fitness losing/gaining weight is all about your energy balance. You have calories you gain during the day minus calories you lose on different occasions(mostly physical exercising and walking, but variants are possible here). That's what you get a day. You also have some certain level of calories(call it X), you need just to keep on. Changes in your weight depends on your consume rate relatively to X and on your lifestyle(your habits may affect your X, because of that some diets are more effective than others). Move your body a certain distance by means of bicycle takes relatively same amount of energy with high and low gears(you may do physical counting to compare the difference, but you may also find more effective ways of spending your free time). Your speed is important thou, cuz you put more energy into working against the wind that you don't feel, when your speed is slooow. there was a plot of work against wind during bicycling, i'd be glad if somebody post link in comments. Your cadence affects does affect different stuff like consuming air efficiently or developing and strengthening your muscles as well as damaging your knees at too high effort for your level of bicycling. But i assume, the main parameter you may need, if you prior target if fitness, is your ability to work regularly and get tired as less as possible, so a good advice is to use both low-cadence and high-cadence riding to decrease the exhaustion caused to a certain parts of your body and divide it to as many parts as possible. If you feel it's hard for you to ride with high cadence - ride with low cadence. If it's hard for you to ride with low cadence - you've got me. You target is kilometers, not the exhaustion. You have to work hard to improve yourself, there are no easy ways, but you probably don't have to suffer.

Answer 4

Losing weight is a consequence of maintaining a net negative energy balance, i.e. metabolising more calories than you consume. It's no more or less than this physiological fundamental. The gear you use on your bike is of little to no relevance.

The total energy you metabolise each day is a combination of your basal daily metabolic output plus whatever extra calories you metabolise through exercising and other activities. If cycling then that's simply a function of the average power through the cranks (watts) multiplied by the duration you rode for (seconds) divided by an efficiency factor (approximately 0.21, since humans are not 100% efficient at converting fuel substrates into mechanical energy).

In order to metabolise more than you currently do, the trick is to ride harder for longer. However our ability to ride hard comes with some limitations on our ability to sustain the effort level for very long or to consistently repeat such effort, and so to increase the calories metabolised most people simply ride for longer durations.

As for calorie intake, that's all about what and how much you eat and drink. It's way easier to consume calories than it is to metabolise them, so keep that in mind when considering where the priority lies with weight management.

As a rule of thumb, think about training being mostly about improving your fitness (power output) while you eat in a manner to get lean.

With respect to what your bike shop said, there's not a lot of context to go on but my view is if you are cycling, enjoying it and not harming yourself or anyone else, then who cares what gear you choose to ride? Just have fun.