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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

I'm happy for the author, but I've always found these sort of tricks to be a chore. I bought a cargo ebike and use it for 99% of my traveling, including a 20 mile commute to work (~40 minutes each way). Now you can exercise for free, no tricking necessary.

Sadly you aren't going to become super muscular riding around a bike, but I assure you, you'll be in excellent shape even with an ebike.

Maybe it's because I'm lazy, but I find having an active life is superior to exercising frequently and having an otherwise inactive life (I also use a deskcycle and a treadmill desk setup for about 2-3 hours at work).

I recently bought a 20lb weighted vest to add some resistance when I'm walking around the house. we'll see how that goes.

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I wouldn't wear that weighted vest too much. If you wear it all day, it will have the same adverse effect on your joints as being 20 lbs overweight.

It's fine to use it to add work to body-weight exercises such as pullups, squats, etc. but don't wear it for hours just walking around.

Surely that’s only true if the poster is already at the high end of normal? If he weighs 160lbs adding 20lbs isn’t going to do any harm.

The issue with things like weighted vests or weighted leg braces is that it's 20 lbs in one place, and it's not attached to you the same way your flesh is. If you gained 20 pounds it'd be distributed around your body, on various joints. No single place would experience significantly more stress. If you put on a vest, all that weight is being placed on your shoulders, which isn't somewhere you normally have much weight.

but is it really exercise with an ebike? I'd like to see others chip in on that (or studies ;).

why wouldn't it be? you can still pedal and lower the assistance. personally I find using an ebike with low assistance to be more difficult than a regular, light road bike

my question was not well-written. Should've been: Is it worthwhile exercise? And you answered that one. I guess it all depends on how much assistance you let go through.

>> personally I find using an ebike with low assistance to be more difficult than a regular, light road bike

this doesn't make an sense, unless you are intentionally using a big, heavy ebike with little pedal assist on purpose; why wouldn't you just stick with the road bike if it's less work, saving the complexity, cost and e-waste?

it's less work than an ebike barely helping, yes. however given the same effort I can carry more things and go much faster on an ebike.

Yes. Try riding one and it’s self-evident that it is. (Unless it has a throttle and you’re using that the whole time, but if your goal is exercise don’t do that!)

Either this is a flippant response or you've never been on an ebike. They are not motorcycles and require effort from the rider. The effort can be as minimal or as strenuous as you desire. If you measure by duration the effort is the same. If you measure by speed than one may exercise less overall but folks tend to make more ebike trips so there could be an offset there.

It is ridiculous to question if there is any effort expended.

This reply doesn't assume best intent. I've ridden many ebikes and the effort is so clearly lower, to the point that it feels about the same as walking 1-2 mph. Maybe I ride it differently than everybody else somehow.

too many variables to compare - assistance level, wattage, gear, etc.

This is definitely my suspicion, I mentioned it in another comment. The e biking experience I have seems extremely assisted, but I bet that's at one end of the spectrum.

I remember going to a talk by a cardiologist who said he told patients to take the bicycle and sometimes they'd come back with a worse heart. Then it would turn out that those patients thought an electric bicycle is good too, since it looks like a bicycle and you have to use the pedals like a bicycle. But since you don't really exert yourself it doesn't help the heart. That was maybe 10 years ago, so electric bicycles were not so ubiquitous back then.

That is not how ebikes work. Also, the anecdote is suspect, cause whole lot of hos patients will ride literally nothing or ride super rarely regardless of what bike they have.

You can pick the torque you want for less or more assistance, and it stops at 25Km/h anyway.

Very much so. My heart rate readings are basically the same as on my road bike but I’m making the trip with ~100 pounds of kid & cargo.

I’ve seen a few studies supporting this in general: people ride with the same intensity but go further or get there faster.

There’s a really key benefit which is less obvious: e-bikes remove disincentives. Everyone I know who bought one rides more because they don’t have to worry about that one big hill, or the spot where you need to be on a road & going <20 mph triggers driver aggression, or you can carry your heavier groceries home, etc.

> I’ve seen a few studies supporting this in general: people ride with the same intensity but go further or get there faster.

I highly doubt this. I believe it's true for you, but in the Netherlands I always notice how e-bikers generally ride the maximum legal speed (25km/h) but at a preposterously low cadence and while sitting perfectly upright. Non e-bikers on the other hand go slower, have a higher cadence and (if there's a significant head wind) move their torso left and right in accordance with the pedal strokes. No way those intensities match.

I do believe that the area under curve can be similar, because e-bikers can indeed ride further.

I’d easily believe there’s a country bias: the Netherlands has so much more infrastructure encouraging non-enthusiast usage whereas here in the U.S. most places are still selecting for more adventurous riders.

It objectively is, yes.

The objective part being the heart rate monitor on my watch. I routinely get into the 130-145 range.

Or sometimes not! The throttle is not labor intensive. But that gets boring.

I'm surprised about the down votes, I'm similarly curious. I bike a lot, and occasionally take a bikeshare e bike, and the difference is night and day. Yes, I'm moving my legs in the bike pedaling motion, but it in a way that feels like it exclusively is just a different input mechanism for the motor.

I wonder if there is a large spectrum of power in e bikes, and that bikeshare e bikes are at one end of that spectrum.

It depends on the bicycle. Some of them, at the right assistance level, the rider still pedals enough to be in light cardio range, which provides huge health benefits. Other ebikes, not so much.

Depends on the e-bike and the riding behaviour, naturally.

If you simply use the assist to go faster but otherwise put in the same effort, then it's exercise. And if you enjoy the speed and it's convenient to travel more or even switch out car trips, it gets extra points. But if you simply take the same amount of trips, spend less time due to the extra speed, and mostly cycle on full pedal-assist (there's ebikes that are simply electric motorbikes with pedals) then no, it wouldn't be exercise.

There's some evidence that ebike riders get more exercise than regular bike riders, https://electrek.co/2019/08/11/electric-bike-riders-more-exe...

Oh for sure. What people don't realize is how high the "whee!" factor is on an ebike. You're gonna be wanting to go fast automatically and near the bikes top speed the assistance gently tapers off. You'll balance at a speed where the amount of work you're doing is reasonable. You'll cycle much farther than otherwise because if your legs give in you can always cruise home at a slightly lower speed.

It's probably the best invention in transport since the car. Remember all the hype for the segway how it'd be the new mode of transport? all that applies to electric bicycles.

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