Heart Rate Training, bike / stationary bike

Are the cadences similar?

Yeah, only 2 differences I can think of are the cadence, and the position.

Changing position on my road bike I can see nearly a 10 bpm difference on my heart rate going from being in the drops or on the hoods to sitting straight up.

If the cadence is low, PE could be higher while still doing less work thus a lower heart rate as well.

If other factors might be at play, I can't think of them off the top of my head.

I used to do a lot of my bike training on a similar setup--can think of a couple of reasons. On the road, even on a fairly flat course, there are small changes in elevation so you can coast some of the time. This plus occasional breaks for lights, intersections, etc. might cut down the RPE. But if the breaks are short, you might not see a noticable drop on heart rate. On the road, you're dealing with wind resistance. Even if you try to keep RPE steady, you may still find it elevates your heart rate. On a road bike you are, of course, going somewhere, and possibly doing it with other people. That might distact you from the level of effort you're putting out and give you higher HR (especially if you're talking with your buddies while riding) with lower perceived RPE.

Finally (I think most important) the resistance setup on a spin bike or stationary is quite different than on a road bike. There's a much higher range of resistance, and sometimes not much choice between spinning madly at a lower level, or pushing a really high level that you wouldn't do on a road bike. What's probably happened is that you're not finding that " sweet spot" gear that you can find on your road bike. Instead, you're either stuck at too low a gear where you have to ride super high cadence to get HR up, or in a gear that's harder than what you'd ride on the road. To prevent this, I try to go for a resistance level that gives me a similar cadence to road riding (80-90 RPM), but this can be difficult to find on some bikes.

I totally misread the OP as looking at a bike on the trainer vs an actual stationary machine :p

My bad.

Yes, you get more breaks on the road, you're changing position more, you're just more comfortable, and you're expending energy doing stuff *other* than just rotating the legs with turning, getting up/down etc.

On the trainer/stationary bike pretty well all of that is eliminated.

Also, it's just more mentally draining being on a trainer too, so the perceived effort can be higher as a result.

That in addition to stuff said before :p

As for the cadence; while on the trainer it tells me exactly what my cadence is and where I need to be. On the bike I either have to calculate it manually or just go by feel. This is an area I could focus in on a little more.To include I will try to find that sweet spot on the trainer.



Edited by goingthere 2015-02-09 10:07 AM

Do you have any sort of cycling computer?

I can't imagine cycling without my garmin with the cadence sensor!

Don't most stationaries have a cadence display on the monitor (or was I spoiled by the one at my gym that shows cadence, watts, virtual "speed" and "distance"--which is not very accurate but within about 10% of road results), elapsed time, % of workout done, heart rate, and the TV show of one's choice)?

On an actual bike, you can always do a sample count for a minute if you don't have a sensor. I don't on my road bike computers in Vietnam, and do that a few times an hour just to see if I'm in the ballpark (in a reasonable gear, which varies as the place I ride outdoors can be really windy).

Edited by Hot Runner 2015-02-10 4:35 AM

Thought I'd jump in here to add few things and a question. The precor and other stationary bikes at the gym: I'll use them sporadically with my HR strap on and a metronome and cross-compare to see if the bike computers are accurate. I haven't been all that disappointed - variation tiny if that at all. I'd check that just to make sure. Not all systems are calibrated well etc etc. If so, then the post mentioning the resistance compared to a spinner and open road conditions is spot on.

Question: Since I plan on moving to power meters in the near future, I'll occasionally go on the stationary bike to read my wattage and attempt to gauge my perceived level of effort to corresponding wattage. I'm curious if anyone has put much trust in the wattage stat on a stationary bike

Edited by TJHammer 2015-03-04 7:09 PM

Not sure about trust level but in the absence of a power meter I sometimes use the one on the stationary bike so I can find HR at various % of max and try to hit that on my trainer. For a few years I did most of my training on a stationary with a watt meter. Basically, you need to consistently ride the same bike since they may be calibrated differently. The numbers do seem to make sense relative to RPE and HR and are consistent between workouts, but don't totally compare to a normal power meter or Computrainer value. For me personally (okay, I am admitting my suckedness on a public forum, but in self-defense, I am only 115 pounds!) my 20-minute FTP test result within the same period was 164 on the stationary, and 195 on my road bike on a Computrainer. It does seem that the stationary, at least the brand I used, tends to use cadence more than resistance when figuring power, as opposed to the Computrainer, if that makes any sense.

It makes total sense because I did a simply 5 miles after weights last night just to play around and see and did also find that cadence seemed to be a serious manipulator of that stationary bike stat; obviously it'd go up more if I increased both resistance and cadence. The %max HR comparison is what I find myself curious to see how it compares, but I'd have to run an experiment, but you can see how different it is based on your 164 vs. 195 comparison

Edited by TJHammer 2015-03-05 11:50 AM

Yes--if you are going to do power-based training on a stationary, then you need to do the tests on it and use those values, preferably on the same bike each time. As I recall, the other two bikes at the gym felt a little "easier" or "harder" (measuring by HR and RPE) at the same power level, but the one I used whenever available gave me consistent RPE and HR at each power level, and varied little from day to day. BTW the 164 and 195 numbers are watts, not HR. Heart rate was much more similar--I think 165 and 168. RPE (near-death) pretty identical as well!

Edited by Hot Runner 2015-03-05 4:20 PM