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Comment by mi100hael | Hacker News Reader

9 mph is awfully slow. Most cyclists who ride on a regular basis would be able to average around 15 mph. An hour each way is still a little long, but not terrible considering it doubles as a workout and obviates the need to visit a gym.

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People who use a bike to commute and run errands are different than people who use the bike for exercise.

In the Netherlands, the average biking speed in Amsterdam is 14.9 km/h. "In the popular cycling regions Drenthe and Overijssel the average speed is highest: 15.8 km/h." - http://www.holland-cycling.com/blog/260-amsterdam-has-slowes... [1]

9 mph = 14.5 kph, so nearly 1/2 of the cyclists in Amsterdam cycle "awfully slow" by your scale. The point is, they do bike. Though the average trip length was a bit over 5km, not 24m.

[1] This was by 55,000 cyclists who voluntarily participated in National Bike Counting Week, so may not reflect the general population.

I love cycling but a two-hour cycling commute is going to be impractical for even people who like to go to the gym.

And if we're talking average American commutes, a lot of them involve routes where you might have only freeways between you and your destination.

if you're driving the bike mentioned in the article, I bet you aren't averaging 15mph

NY is basically flat, so there is no problem averaging 15 mph with that. In general the most time in a bike commute in a city like NY is taken up with stopping at every intersection, and for cargo bikes, not being able to filter past gridlocked cars.

...and crash into cars or trees .

Cycling to work is in no way a replacement for proper full body workout.

It does not obviate the need to visit a gym.

Is a "full body" workout necessary for most people? Obviously you won't have much in the way of upper body strength, say, if all you do is bike commute. But my understanding is that the amount of exercise required to be healthy is much less than what most fitness enthusiasts are committed to. It wouldn't surprise me if simply biking to work were sufficient to net most of the vital benefits of exercise for most people. (And even if it weren't, I'd still doubt that a gym membership is necessary.)

Full body workout becomes much more important as you get older, otherwise you lose mobility much sooner in life.

Most people in the US get little or no exercise. __Any__ exercise would be a big improvement over none.

Does help though, you can get away with way less workouts per week if you cycle every day. Most people barely workout anyway so it would definitely be an improvement.

Seems debatable to me. Since the 1960s, Ken Cooper has advocated for workouts based primarily or exclusively on cardiovascular exercise like cycling. In his book "Aerobics" he had an example comparing a cycling commuter to a dedicated weightlifter and (as I recall) he didn't think the weightlifter was improving their fitness in the ways that matter.

Personally I also don't think weightlifting is really the best way to achieve fitness these days either, it is simply the most straight forward for people and the easiest to understand. After lifting weights for over a decade I moved on to calisthenics focused training, which I feel is superior but more complicated to learn at more advanced levels.

If I recall correctly Cooper had a similar problem with calisthenics and discussed it in the book. That training doesn't help your cardiovascular capacity as much as he wants, which is what's most important for your health and longevity. (I don't think calisthenics was given any points in his system.)

He probably would also disagree about what's most straightforward. I recall him recommending running in the book because it doesn't require any special equipment or training, in contrast to cycling, weight lifting, swimming, calisthenics, etc.

To be clear, I do think strength training is important as you age to avoid sarcopenia. But I suspect that running or cycling would provide enough resistance to slow sarcopenia for your lower body, making other exercise more important for your upper body and core.

You don't need to visit a gym to get a workout, a set of free weights is a good (and inexpensive) way to tone up at home -- you really don't need machines. Take the money you would have spent on a gym and spend it on a periodic visit from a personal trainer.

Yea you don't really need a gym, but I'd bet most people simply don't have the space to do many workouts in their home comfortably these days if the stories I read are accurate.

It really doesn't take much room for basic fitness at home - especially if you get your cardio exercise outside -- I have a set of dumbbells, some stretch bands, and a wobble board under the bed and do everything in a 3 foot wide space at the foot of the bed. And in reality, it doesn't take any equipment at all, since there are plenty of good exercises that use your own body weight as resistance:

https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/no-gym-requi...

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