What kind of riding is best for weight loss?

Barteos

From your OWN EXPERIENCE, what duration and intensity rides work for you when trying to loose weight?

Wooliferkins

Not so much long and slow but long and not b***s out. You need to educate the body to use fat stores as fuel so you need to be doing steady 90 min + rides.

weeksy59

NONE.


Diet is the best thing for weight loss.

There's different schools of thought regarding weight loss zone, aerobic zone and anaerobic zone.

However unless your intake is correct into the belly, then none will produce the results. In the same way, if diet is good, then ALL will work well.

For me personally it's all about calories... the more you burn the more you will lose. So if you do 1 hour HARD that's say 1000 cals... but 2 hours easy is also 1000 cals. Both good in their own way.

This is where it gets complex, if you do 1 hour hard this week, you may manage 1 hours 15 hard next week. Which is say 1250 cals....

If you do 2 hours gentle, you may only manage 2 hours next week, still same 1000.

There's also the logic of HIIT or high intensity interval training... but that is more aimed at increasing fitness than just weight loss.

I'd go for long time and medium intensity with an odd burst thrown in.

This is why general XC riding is perfect, some uphills, some downhills, easy bit, hard bit. etc etc.

The Northern Monkey

Fat burning tips

1. Keep the ride intensity under 80 percent of your maximum heart rate (HRmax) and ride for long periods.
2. Training regularly, even turbo training sessions, helps use fat as fuel more than any special food, supplement or psychological trick and during a two-hour endurance ride does not save glycogen but it does significantly decrease the use of fats stored within the muscle fibres.

ride_whenever

long and steady even really steady. When I was doing 2hrs really slow (8mph coaching rowing from my bike) i found i couldn't put weight on at all regardless of what i ate.

asdfhjkl

weeksy59 wrote:

Diet is the best thing for weight loss.

There's different schools of thought regarding weight loss zone, aerobic zone and anaerobic zone.

I agree with both of these things. Once you've got nutrition nailed, it's all about finding what works for you. So long as you are eating clean, you probably won't find too much difference between different riding styles (unless you're looking at getting seriously lean) - so just do whatever you enjoy the most

Anonymous

I find that I lose the most weight per week doing short (90 min max) high cadence (95) type rides. I do 3 of these on the flat per week and then 2 rides on the hills keeping the cadence at as close to 95 as I can.

This was recommended to me by a Sports Scientist at a local clinic and it seems to work really well for me. Before I was using my Garmin 705 and trying to stay between certain zones, after going to the Sports clinic I realised my zones were totally wrong for me so I have moved on to this kind of training instead.

I also have a lowish calorie diet 2200 calories per day having 1 day off per week for curry and 1 cider

I was 18 stone 10 pounds in June and am sitting at 15 stone 8 at the moment.

rhyko7

ideally long and intense
but try and do both, they help you loose weight in deifferent ways

mingmong

I have a coffee early in the morning to get the metabolism going.

Ride for 30 mins, then eat a banana or energy bar. This does shift unwanted pounds.

Cheers