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Comment by jakear | Hacker News Reader

Rowing machines are in my experience much more efficient. 200W is maintainable for an hour or more with some experience. (2 minute split, for any rowers out there). 60W (3:00/500m) is genuinely difficult to pull - any effort at all will exceed that.

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Moderately well trained (based on 8-10hr/wk cycling specific training year round) older (40+) cyclist here... 260w average for an hour is pretty reasonable... 300w for an hour for hard a effort is possible for me when measured at the crank with a power meter.

One thing to keep in mind about power numbers vs pro cyclists is that they can churn out these kinds of watts at significantly lower body weights than a recreational cyclist. For output into electricity though it doesn't matter if I’m 35lbs heavier than a pro because watts are watts.

Regardless it seems to me that these levels of output using a full body motion of a rowing machine would be exceedingly difficult for a one hour period compared to cycling that leaves most of your muscle groups relaxed.

The past paragraph is funny to me - in my experience the same wattage is much easier on a rowing machine exactly because it uses more muscles. Sure I’m primarily using my legs, but they get a slight rest each cycle when I’m at the tail end of the stroke and using arms/back.

For 1 hour FTP in heavy trading training, I did about 250 watts rowing and 300 watts cycling. I did 250 watts on the bike for about 6 hours, and I don’t think I could have done 200 watts for 3 hours rowing for several reasons.

I think the best multi-hour total energy yield efforts are from recumbent bicycles.

80W seems low for somebody who bikes every day, I guess it's not actually FTP (what you describe by maintainable for an hour) but aerobic.

I ride 3-4 mornings/wk. Strava estimates I averaged 89w over the course of my last ride (just under an hour).

Was this a leisurely pedal or were you going hard?

Moderate - not going all out, but definitely working my legs. To the sibling question - don't have a pulse meter, so no idea.

The question here is how hard do you ride (given by the heart rate). Do you ride at 120bpm or 160bpm? If it's 120bpm, you can probably increase the output with little training or just by accepting a higher heart rate. If it's 160bpm, something seems wrong.

I wouldn't trust strava estimates. They are (or were, I haven't used it in a while) all over the place for me.

For a 160lb rider, that’s only somewhere in the range of 14mph sustained on flat ground. That is incredibly low for a regular cyclist. Frankly, that power is just far lower than what most people can put out. My assumption here is that Strava has very poor estimation for riders without power meters. Or your route has many stoplights and stop signs, which is difficult to account for when calculating average power.

Regular recreational cyclists can generally put out 200-250W for well over an hour depending on weight.

Ah - I'm mostly on pretty urban routes, so relatively frequent stops/slow downs is definitely a factor.

how do you want strava estimates to be reliable? they can't take wind into account they can't take the efficiency of your bike, they can't take your shape (which influence the air resistance) into account that can't be reliable at all. 89w is nothing

Everything I have seen says cycling is generally more efficient. I think the 80w the author quoted is quite low. They may just be a small very person.

That seems odd to me - sure in the water rowing is slower (friction is way higher), but in terms of muscle use and energy output, rowing uses way more muscles and gets better range of motion in the legs.

I think it's that the cycling movement is just more efficient for sustained efforts, possibly because it uses less muscles. For sustained efforts, I don't think being able to use more muscles is an advantage, since you're going to be limited by your cardiovascular system. If you created a bike that you could also generate power with your arms, i woudln't expect to be able to put out more power because muscles are the limiter. The muscle fiber distribution might be in favor of only using your legs as well (eg. fast vs slow twitch)

I'm not much of a rower, but after your pull, pulling your body forward for the next row is all wasted effort as far as producing mechanical work. Cycling doesn't really have any wasted phase like this.

Here's a bunch of rowers comparing their cycling/rowing watts: https://www.c2forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=186612

What I'm not sure is if you were to measure total energy expenditure at the human (as opposed to the spinning wheel), then cycling/rowing might be closer.

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