genejockey 

I started out doing 20 min/day - basically the ride to and from work. Then I found myself adding distance to one or the other leg of my commute. Then doing that, and a weekend ride. Then lengthening the weekend ride, and all because the fitness, which had been the primary goal, became secondary to the enjoyment. Even today, 25 year later, I think of any kind of structured training as a way to ride farther and faster with less fatigue.

But for the OP, I think riding 20 min 5x/week is a good way to start. Going for 1:40 once a week may be more exhausting than you can easily manage, especially only once a week.

drlogik 

I have a 7 mile and a 20 mile loop. Weekdays I ride my 7 mile loop every day because that's all I can fit in with work and everything else.. Sometimes I do the loop twice though. The 7 mile loop has three climbs and I bomb each one. When I really push it, it's a pretty good short intense workout. I usually do the 20 mile loop both Saturday and Sunday.

I can tell when I skip a day because the next ride is more difficult. If I go more than 3 days between rides I really feel the difference.

mackgoo

I guess it depends on why you ride. I ride because I like riding and getting out in the air. So I'd prefer daily.

PeteHski

Very different. But I would have thought anyone riding 5x 20 mins per week is just looking to maintain a very basic fitness level. Riding 1x 100 mins per week might slightly improve your endurance, but I doubt it would be as effective for general fitness. Especially if you ride those 20 min sessions at higher intensity, which you can by their nature. That is probably the main advantage of riding 5x per week vs a single longer session. The ratio of stimulus to recovery is much better on a 5 day routine, especially if you don’t take the rest days consecutively.

spelger

not if it's a Tuesday morning ride.

beng1

If your only exercise is that twenty-minute ride five times a week then stick with that. Try to ride hard enough so you are breathing harder than at rest, and it is best to be breathing to the point where if you try to talk you have to stop after each sentence and catch up on your breathing a bit. I agree with what someone else said that if you do not exercise for six days then you are going to cancel out physical benefits for your 100 minute weekly ride unless you go for walks or do something else that is exercise three or four other days of the week.

livedarklions

Is this the only 2 choices? Why?

20 minutes is pretty short, and a week between rides is pretty long. Seems like there should be a whole lot of other ways to divide 100 minutes over 7 days that would maybe balance things out a bit better, like 33 minutes 3x/wk or one 50 minute session and two 25 minute sessions..


Is this a time constraint issue or an endurance one? Why limit to 100 mins. per week?

livedarklions

Did he recommend lighting up a cigarette on the ride?

Maelochs

As I understand it, it takes at least 15 minutes of aerobic exercise to kick your body into fat-burning metabolism .... and in a 20-minute ride you are unlikely to get that .... but ... Do You Want It?

Why do you ride? What do you want from riding? "Pros" and "Cons" are purely personal. if you like tooling around for 20 minutes every evening and it is great stress relief and gets you out of the house, or gives you a good wake-up in the morning or Whatever ... if you Like doing it, that is the "Pro."

If you want to build serious strength and fitness, you probably cannot do a Lot very quickly in 20 minutes five times a week .... but still better than nothing.

Why is it either/or? Why not ride as much as you like, and set a personal goal of going a little farther and/or harder on days when you feel like it?

Whatever.

LarrySellerz

I think if you do the same kind of exercise you plateau. For me, I’m used to my commute (25 min 10x per week), so a long ride or short hard intervals are needed to “improve” my fitness. Just doing the same thing every day makes me good at that same thing, and its good for health too I guess. But yeah switch it up.

Erzulis Boat 

Due to the very minimal (relative to cycling) time constraints to this equation, I am going to look at this question but change the activity to pushups.

20 pushups a day for 5 days/week vs. 100 pushups one day/week. No question as to what I would opt for. The 20 pushups a day.

Unlike pushups that can be easily quantified (weight/distance/repetition) with any given individual before execution of the exercise, cycling is dependent on a host of factors.

From my experience, rides of 50+ miles are hugely beneficial to cycling fitness, but a mere 20 minutes of cycling 5 days a week (although "good for you") just isn't the same. That being said, if I only had one choice, I would do the 20/5 over the 100/1 as the 100 minutes ( your current X) is not a great enough duration to grossly offset the 20/5 on a bicycle. I would rather exercise with more frequency per week.

Make your current X=20 miles, and then ask the question.

Mtracer

Generally I think riding more often is better than just once a week. Probably more so if you only ride 20 mins at a time. 100 minutes a week isn't going to make someone a very strong cyclist. But it's a pretty good amount of aerobic exercise.

But this choice is more the extreme for weekly riding. Of course, some people only have the time to ride on the weekend, and if one big ride is your only option, it's by default the best option.

As for the example of 20 minutes not being that much, it's all relative. For me, I'm riding more like 500 minutes a week (8+ hours) and do it in 3-4 rides. I'm not going to do a 20-minute ride. But, I know people that 20 minutes is a big effort for them.

I think I'd look at this question like this. If a X minute ride were of some significance, then a 5X ride is going to be a major effort. Or reversed, if the 5X ride isn't pretty darn hard, then the 1X ride is going to be trivially easy (unless it's high intensity). But then that's a different question, I.E>, 5 x 1X high intensity vs 1 x 5X endurance ride.

Maelochs

What does the OP want?

Does s/he want to be a beast bicyclist who can outsprint most other riders? A mad hill-climber? A long-distance tourer? A casual pleasure cruiser?

If the OP wants to ride less than half-hour a day five days a week ... good training schedule.

If the OP wants to get stronger .... ride harder and ride longer.

On the other hand, an hour-and-a-half once a week really won't do a lot either .... I would suggest three or four rides a week, with a longer ride when they fit the schedule and temperament of the rider, and shorter, easier rides for recovery or when the rider just wants to relax.

However ... if the OP wants to develop a regimen of High-intensity intervals and hill repeats .... that is also an option.

Again, what the OP Wants sort of determines what course best leads there .....

Garfield Cat

Sometimes a rider doesn't know what they want...yet. Perhaps, they're just "combing the landscape" and getting ideas. In the final, they really need to know what they want out of cycling. That may be a series of things over a lifetime of riding. You just outlined some of those objectives.

grantelmwood

My heart rate increases within 2 minutes of starting the ride.
I break a sweat by the 1.5 mile and 6:00 mark

This is exactly how I am looking at it.
Daily pushups instead of a once a week marathon of pushups
Frequency vs. Duration

cyclezen

since neither of those two options are in any way acceptable, you have to change x to some acceptable value.
I'm hard pressed to think of anything worth doing at your current x;
Anything !
Only thing which comes to mind is reading our local newspaper, which never has more than 8 min. of reading in it anyway.
... ok, one day's total of visits to the 'john' is worthwhile x. but that equation would need 7x... (Ok, often x is also lower/smallerr)
X on
Yuri

CliffordK

I'd mix it up a bit.

5 days a week for 20 min. That sounds like a commute. Or, perhaps twice daily of 20 minutes for 5 days a week.

Perhaps 5 miles each way???

Every little bit helps.

Then 5x, so occasionally doing 100 minutes. Or, about 20 or 25 miles. Not bad for the occasional ride.

If you want to get stronger, push it a bit more. Perhaps try 100 miles every once in a while. 200 miles in a day?

Once you do a double century in a day, then pretty much anything else seems quite basic.

jgwilliams

It really depends what you want to do. Riding five days a week is good for general fitness and if that's all you want then I'd say it's better than once a week. If you ever want to do longer rides then you need to practice distance riding from time to time.

Maelochs

Personally I find that after a while I Want to ride a little more .... After riding a given distance regularly, I finish my ride feeling like I haven't done enough. My options are to ride harder or to ride longer.

I go entirely by how I feel ... I set no schedule. I set no goals. I have no "exercise regimen." I ride primarily because I like to. However, I also like the feeling of having done some work on the bike, sometimes.

Various health and life situations have kept me off the bike at various times, so I find myself often "starting over" from a very low base of riding fitness, so I get to go through this process fo getting stronger and riding longer pretty often (more than I'd like, but that's life.) Still, the pattern seems the same--after a while I will be so comfortable doing a given distance at a given intensity level that I will want to do more sometimes.

You do whatever feels right to you. I will not validate it or criticize it. However, a question like you asked here ... the Pros and Cons are entirely determined by your goals and desires, which so far are not entirely clear. If you are happy with the way you ride now .... great. If you want someone to tell you that you are doing it "right," obviously there is no "right" way. it is a call only you can make.

grantelmwood

Any fitness you can do for an hour is very low intensity fitness.

Clearly, you are not aware of any sort of high intensity fitness.
Try sprinting for even 60 seconds. You can't.
Or try to do 4 minutes of burpees. You can't.

grantelmwood

Love your ad hoc by feel philosophy.

RChung

Oh. Okay.

terrymorse 

20 minutes times 5 is 100 minutes per week, below the recommended 150 minutes per week.

So for general health, some additional exercise totaling 50 minutes would be useful for general health.

[Edit: Fixed the boneheaded arithmetic error.]

cyclezen

Yeah, well, I take 'recommendations' to be given within the overall arena of what the 'experts' are dealing with...
In the US, a population very over-weight, over-inclined to sit on their asses, very over-eating and under nutritioned (also adversely nutritioned...), under-aware of their own human machines.
... Not everyone, certainly, but a very large majority.
We all have food vices - I certainly have some bad habits and some 'likes' which might be compensation for psychological quirks/issues... but, I try to put some boundaries on those.
Sadly among the worst of Human mechanics - 'Rationalization' plays a major part - as much as I try to control that also.
Back to 20 min....
20 minutes of 'intervals' /Fartlek is certainly among the best uses of 20 minutes.
But that doesn't happen in a vacuum. There;'s 'warmup', of some extensive process, and 'cool-down', often at least as long as the actual main event...
20 minutes of getting on the bike and then getting off the bike. USELESS.
Unless you're going somewhere, shopping, or taking small children out for a bimble - some purpose other than your own act of riding.
Even 'clearing' your head, on-bike meditation, appreciating the enviroment, is much better the longer you can go...
Ride On
Yuri

grantelmwood

Getting off the bike involves a high leg raise, like a dog urinating
Literally getting on and off the bike for 20 minutes straight would be a better workout than most people get