I saw Dev’s post on getting dropped by a dude on an ebike and was wondering if anyone out there is using an ebike as an integral part of their training and if so, how does it help vs. a standard bike?
From a BYU study:
The average heart rate during eMTB use was 94% (31/33) of the average heart rate during conventional mountain bike use. Therefore, eMTB use in this study achieved a majority of the exercise response and exceeded established biometric thresholds for cardiovascular fitness.
From a BYU study:
The average heart rate during eMTB use was 94% (31/33) of the average heart rate during conventional mountain bike use. Therefore, eMTB use in this study achieved a majority of the exercise response and exceeded established biometric thresholds for cardiovascular fitness.
AKA as participating at any level > being on the couch. Also, in a study that’s probably really biased towards the the result.
My n+1 is that around here, 90% of the time I see an e-bike it is either a legit commuter barely doing more than 50w so they can not get sweaty for work OR it is some greenway hero doing almost zero work.
There’s zero exercise purpose for a person capable of climbing on a bike to need an e-bike because they’re in bad shape. You can go 10mph or so on less than 50w. When I ride my cross bike on the greenway with my youngest son at that pace the power meter barely even reads anything!
I think IMHO on the bike front, the commuter is where it’s at.
Fitness wise, if you’re in such bad shape you can’t ride at 10mph on a flattish greenway or use your triple crank on your fitness bike in your neighborhood…maybe you should only ride indoors FIRST until you’re not so fragile.
I keep hearing “well, it helps me get out there”. No, it helps you be a hero instantly instead of having to be the zero for a while like the rest of us did.
Beyond a commuter, a SAG bike in a race, utilizing it for legit work purposes, …then it is a toy.
Again, it’s just my personal opinion that if you’re too fragile to ride a manual pedal bike on easier terrain slowly…you’re not ready yet period.
Open road? I don’t really care, it’s open road. There’s freaking CARS and motorcycles with you already. Free reign, have fun, do whatever. It gets a car off the road. So, e-bikes can have at it on the open road. I’m all for that.
MTB tracks and greenways though? Hell no for MTB and the greenway the bike would have to have ZERO assist after 15mph.
To answer the question blutly: yes. It’s legit.
Is it necessary? Absofreakinglutely not.
For all the smugness that roadies are accused of towards e-bike riders…take a minute and go into a forum with an e-bike subforum and watch what happens when that group bleeds out into the rest of the forum for a topic. It’s a shit storm. Same for recumbents. Watch out when those folks leak out of their subforum into the main topic area.
Everyone is tribal. Roadies, mtb, gravel, tri…we have our tribes and mostly know it. E-bikes for “fitness” is trying to act like a virus to all those tribes simultaneously instead of something more closely resembling nutrition.
I am going to disagree with the previous post. An e-bike can be a super useful training tool for MTB.
What an e-bike allows you to do off-road is session trails and really focus on the skills rather than the fitness. This means you can get a lot of very useful training in on a recovery day without significantly impacting your recovery. Basically its a tool to get faster on your rest days without compromising the quality of the high intensity sessions. Think of it a bit like a technique/drill day in the pool.
I am going to disagree with the previous post. An e-bike can be a super useful training tool for MTB.
Looks like someone’s trying to justify e-MTB use. 
From a BYU study:
The average heart rate during eMTB use was 94% (31/33) of the average heart rate during conventional mountain bike use. Therefore, eMTB use in this study achieved a majority of the exercise response and exceeded established biometric thresholds for cardiovascular fitness.
AKA as participating at any level > being on the couch. Also, in a study that’s probably really biased towards the the result.
My n+1 is that around here, 90% of the time I see an e-bike it is either a legit commuter barely doing more than 50w so they can not get sweaty for work OR it is some greenway hero doing almost zero work.
There’s zero exercise purpose for a person capable of climbing on a bike to need an e-bike because they’re in bad shape. You can go 10mph or so on less than 50w. When I ride my cross bike on the greenway with my youngest son at that pace the power meter barely even reads anything!
I think IMHO on the bike front, the commuter is where it’s at.
Fitness wise, if you’re in such bad shape you can’t ride at 10mph on a flattish greenway or use your triple crank on your fitness bike in your neighborhood…maybe you should only ride indoors FIRST until you’re not so fragile.
I keep hearing “well, it helps me get out there”. No, it helps you be a hero instantly instead of having to be the zero for a while like the rest of us did.
Beyond a commuter, a SAG bike in a race, utilizing it for legit work purposes, …then it is a toy.
Again, it’s just my personal opinion that if you’re too fragile to ride a manual pedal bike on easier terrain slowly…you’re not ready yet period.
Open road? I don’t really care, it’s open road. There’s freaking CARS and motorcycles with you already. Free reign, have fun, do whatever. It gets a car off the road. So, e-bikes can have at it on the open road. I’m all for that.
MTB tracks and greenways though? Hell no for MTB and the greenway the bike would have to have ZERO assist after 15mph.
To answer the question blutly: yes. It’s legit.
Is it necessary? Absofreakinglutely not.
For all the smugness that roadies are accused of towards e-bike riders…take a minute and go into a forum with an e-bike subforum and watch what happens when that group bleeds out into the rest of the forum for a topic. It’s a shit storm. Same for recumbents. Watch out when those folks leak out of their subforum into the main topic area.
Everyone is tribal. Roadies, mtb, gravel, tri…we have our tribes and mostly know it. E-bikes for “fitness” is trying to act like a virus to all those tribes simultaneously instead of something more closely resembling nutrition.
Well once we get out of lockdown, the Ironman Zebra crew could use these!!!
I can see the training value. For example if you have a longer duration commute to work and no shower, you may use the electric motor assist to get to work faster with full assist and no need to shower. On the way home, turn it off and do a full on conventional bike ride. I think it can be helpful.
Also on my other thread, the guy in the jeans and ballcap, when I saw him riding the other way at what must have been 70kph on a slight downhill going as fast as cars, I could see he was truly enjoying himself which is way more work than sitting on the couch, so its a win for him and a win for society if more people are out on bikes of all kinds.
I’m debating picking up an e-bike for the girlfriend so we can ride faster together. That would greatly benefit my training lol
I’m debating picking up an e-bike for the girlfriend so we can ride faster together. That would greatly benefit my training lol
^^^^This.
The one “training” use I see is allowing groups with highly varied fitness to ride together. I wish there was a “+X%” setting where the bikes would add in a set % of the power you are generating, which would be great for this type of ability leveling.
IME it is rare to see them actually used this way; most eBikers I encounter are soft pedaling and barely putting out any watts.
Training for base fitness? Sure.
Training for race fitness? No.
I encountered an eMTB at Phil’s World. It allowed the rider to keep up with her friends.
While climbing isn’t currently a strong suit due to my current fitness level, I’m in the “earn the downhill” tribe.
I admit to not knowing enough about ebikes work. It seems that with the exception of hilly area where one would be stuck riding harder than they would care for, maybe an e-bike (or just a road bike with more generous gearing) would make some sense.
The thing I wonder about e-bikes is whether they remove any incentive to get improve aerobically (or burn more calories, if that’s the goal). Do people on e-bikes ride the same as they do on regular bikes, just faster or is their effort reduced and they just end up riding their regular speeds? I’ve seen claims that people on e-bikes have increased duration, but I’d be curious to know if the increased duration has enough effort to surpass the effort they would have put in a shorter amount of time on a regular bike.
I realize I’m speaking more about beginner types using ebikes vs people trying to train with them. I’m definitely not sold on ebikes, I think a lot of people are generally kind of lazy and look for shortcuts. Of course it’s great to have them available for people with limitations or to equalize abilities in households, but I think a lot of otherwise able folks would use these in lieu of putting in more effort.
I agree but e mountain bikes are blowing up because people can experience trails that were not even possible without walking your bike up the hill.
With a 15mph limit here in the uk then I don’t see why they wouldn’t be a legit training bike?
For the majority of a ride you’ll be doing over that anyway so all you’re doing is dragging an extra 5kg round with you. The only time it’ll be different is on those steeper climbs when the speed drops below 15mph and even then if your sensible and keep the assisted power down it’ll still be useful.
There’s absolutely no reason an ebike can’t be a legit training platform.
If an indoor trainer is, so is an ebike.
Seriously, anything that lets you work the applicable systems and muscles at an appropriate intensity is a legit training tool.
Having a motor on your bike doesn’t limit the amount of power you can produce, it just effects the speed you may do it at and increases your terrain options. I personally don’t fancy one at the moment, but I see nothing at all wrong with them.
I’ll admit to being an ebike snob but on Tuesday I was at the local jump trails with my daughter. We saw a young guy on a full sus emtb. He nailed every big jump then pedalled back to the top. I was impressed that the bike could rake that punishment
I don’t see why they wouldn’t be if used correctly. They just make you faster for the power you output. Personally I don’t see a good reason to do it, but I can see it if someone who normally can only ride 15mph wants to keep up with their friend who rides 20. You still have to do the work right?
Where I see it falling flat as a training tool is giving you a false sense of fitness. Like if you regularly ride effortlessly at 20mph you might not realize you aren’t really working hard enough to race effectively. Perhaps if you put a power meter on (and take that reading before the motor in the power train obviously), and use it as a normal bike in that sense, I don’t see how it’s different.
Training for what? I can see it as a legit fitness platform.
Training for non-motorized bike racing? Er, not so much.
I admit to not knowing enough about ebikes work. It seems that with the exception of hilly area where one would be stuck riding harder than they would care for, maybe an e-bike (or just a road bike with more generous gearing) would make some sense.
The thing I wonder about e-bikes is whether they remove any incentive to get improve aerobically (or burn more calories, if that’s the goal). Do people on e-bikes ride the same as they do on regular bikes, just faster or is their effort reduced and they just end up riding their regular speeds? I’ve seen claims that people on e-bikes have increased duration, but I’d be curious to know if the increased duration has enough effort to surpass the effort they would have put in a shorter amount of time on a regular bike.
I realize I’m speaking more about beginner types using ebikes vs people trying to train with them. I’m definitely not sold on ebikes, I think a lot of people are generally kind of lazy and look for shortcuts. Of course it’s great to have them available for people with limitations or to equalize abilities in households, but I think a lot of otherwise able folks would use these in lieu of putting in more effort.
I have not read the remainder of this thread so I hope I am not repeating an answer here.
I consider myself fortunate that my wife loves to ride as much as I do. There are a lot of folks with families who get grief from their spouse about being away from the family riding.
My wife and I ride at considerably different speeds, and distances. On a ride where I would average 17 mph (27.2kph), my wife would average 12mph (19.2kph). When I ride with her, I go at whatever speed she wants to ride. This is something I do not mind but she wants to go faster. She is not riding to win races, show up others at a group ride, or cheat at any event. She rides for the pure joy of being fit as she can, and exploring.
We are both older now, and she has had multiple surgeries on both knees and has dealt with a chronic hamstring problem for years. Because of this, it has limited her ability to train as much as she desires without risk of causing injury or being in pain. This is a big reason why we discussed getting her an ebike.
I purchased a Specialized Creo for my wife, along with Favero Assiomo pedals. She uses the pedals to monitor her power output independent of the ebike help. What is interesting is that she is still pushing the same watts but she is able to go so much faster now…she keeps up with me, and actually kicks my ass on climbs. She actually pushes herself a little more now that she has the ebike. Previously, without the ebike, she would be scared to try and maintain 130 watts on a climb because of the fear of making her knees/hamstring hurt. Now, she will ride at her watts for a longer time period because she knows if she starts to have aches then the ebike can assist her. In a normal year, I might be able to convince her to go do one big mountain ride. With her new ebike, she has done a big mountain ride the past three weekends with me and my riding buddy. This bike has made her so happy.
I started this post a while a go. I’ve been thinking about getting an e-bike for a while. I think it’s a great tool for helping someone who has less power ride with you. My wife has a e-bike and she can basically ride with me now even when I’m pushing fairly hard.
I think I’m going to buy one so I can train with folks better than I both to help means to help them. For example, my FTP his around 250 watts, while my son is up around 325-350. With something like a specialized Creo, I think I’ll be able to train with him even when he is doing interval work near his ftp. I can add 50 watts of power at the beginning of an interval and the interval progresses, up to 100/125 watts and be able to stay with him but also push my envelope. Also, I can push him by riding at/above his ftp and just the dynamic of having me there pushing him I think will benefit him as well…
I wish there was a “+X%” setting where the bikes would add in a set % of the power you are generating, which would be great for this type of ability leveling.
This is how the Bosch system works. Eco +50%, tour +100%, all the way up to 300/280% on turbo - there’s also a total limit (software + physical) so turbo + a 500 watt sprint isn’t dumping 2kw total to the wheels.
IMO, throttle bikes are a different thing all together and are really more (hopefully) car replacement/fun than anything fitness oriented.
I started this post a while a go. I’ve been thinking about getting an e-bike for a while. I think it’s a great tool for helping someone who has less power ride with you. My wife has a e-bike and she can basically ride with me now even when I’m pushing fairly hard.
I think I’m going to buy one so I can train with folks better than I both to help means to help them. For example, my FTP his around 250 watts, while my son is up around 325-350. With something like a specialized Creo, I think I’ll be able to train with him even when he is doing interval work near his ftp. I can add 50 watts of power at the beginning of an interval and the interval progresses, up to 100/125 watts and be able to stay with him but also push my envelope. Also, I can push him by riding at/above his ftp and just the dynamic of having me there pushing him I think will benefit him as well…
What you are describing is similar to my wife and I (except her ftp is not 250, more like 150). Even with an ftp of 150, she uses her Creo to join me on rides, and she keeps up (except when I’m pushing really hard for a long time). We did a ride this weekend where I was holding 320-340 watts during the climb. She stayed with me the whole time, and also got a good workout along the way (she never lets the bike do all the work. It gives her enough boost to let her keep up with me).