Originally Posted by
livedarklions
You are just demonstrating that you don't know anything about bicycles and bicycling.
False, though, ironically, you just demonstrated that you didn't understand my posts.
Quit doubling down.
The last person who replied didn't understand what I said either, which is why he argued against something I never said (i.e., I never said that one was "harder" than the other, only that they're different).
Riding a 15 pound bike does not require half as much effort per mile as a 30 pound bike because the weight of the bike is really a fairly small percentage of the total vehicle weight, which is your weight plus the weight of the bike.
And again you've demonstrated that you didn't understand what I said, despite the fact that I've been typing in plain English. I never said anything at all about effort, so you've just posted a non sequitur. It is half the
work per mile, and that's a fact that anyone can easily calculate with the simple work formula.
Also, bicycling involves momentum, which is why differences in weight actually only have much of an effect on acceleration and hills (more energy needed to ascend with the heavier bike, but the heavier bike will actually go faster downhill, all other things equal).
Why don't you try a 500-pound bike and see what happens? How about a 1,000-pound bike? When you use extremes it's plain as day that the workout effect is different, and it's not as if the effect of the workout just suddenly starts being different once you reach an arbitrary weight difference; a weight difference always results in a different workout effect. As I said in my original post, you can do the same amount of work with any weight bike (assuming you can move it at all; if you can't move it no work is done regardless of how much effort you put into trying to move it), but you can't get the same "workout" on a lighter bike as you can on a heavier bike, nor vice versa, because the body reacts differently to moving heavier weights than it does to moving lighter weights.
There's no equivalence to bench presses in this regard.
This is another non sequitur. I never said that bench pressing is equivalent in any way to riding a bike. I used it as an example of how the amount of work can be the same but the effect of the workout is drastically different.
But here's the kicker--you can, at least in theory, equalize the workouts by changing the gears. Want to make a 15 pound bike feel like a 30 pound bike? Accelerate it or climb a hill on it in a high gear.
Only to a certain point, because bikes don't have an infinite number of gears.
Basically, though, your statement that it can't be the same workout is essentially meaningless, because that's always true, even if you're using the exact same bike for two workouts. Something will not be equal, whether it's how much water there is in your body, or wind direction, or ambient temperature affecting your abilities that day, or you got a flat that day, or...
Your concession is noted. Also, keep in mind that a workout with a different-weight bike can have a drastically different effect, depending on how big the weight difference is, unlike the far more minor differences that you've listed.