Peloton/cycling for climbers?

Hi all, so my wife got herself a Peloton as an early Christmas present. I haven't used it yet but I'm kind of intrigued/curious about it. I am curious if there is any aspect of cycling that is at all useful for climbing?  I'm not a cyclist (I used to bicycle to work every day pre-covid but that was pretty casual), but my initial thought is it's probably not helpful other than for general cardio. Any experienced cyclists have thoughts?

General cardio. Pays off on the approach. Unless you have perfect joints and no past injuries you can’t run enough to get the level of cardio you’ll get from cycling. Also, you can’t hike enough unless you already live in the mountains. 

Used with high resistance, it can be helpful.

This is based on my experience climbing after a fully loaded bike tour with lots of hills. After only 10 days of riding, my hiking became significantly stronger. I was suddenly able to keep up with experienced backpackers on long approaches.

I also had better hip mobility. When high-stepping, I could lift my feet up higher using strength alone, not having to use momentum to get into that outer range of flexibility. The crank arms on my bike are slightly long for my size - 175 mm at 30" inseam - which I believe played a role (my bike's riding position is more upright than a road bike so this actually works for me).

Depending on the type of climbing you do, these factors may or may not be important to your training. Bike fitness helped me cover ground more efficiently, both flat and vertical, great for long multipitch and summer alpine routes.

Overall fitness, cycling is great, especially a supplement to climbing. I would actually suggest focusing on an easier gear and practice efficient spinning, working primarily on your aerobic system. If you want to lift weights, lift weights, but a bicycle is a poor substitute for a leg weight machine.

Long Ranger wrote:

Overall fitness, cycling is great, especially a supplement to climbing. I would actually suggest focusing on an easier gear and practice efficient spinning, working primarily on your aerobic system. If you want to lift weights, lift weights, but a bicycle is a poor substitute for a leg weight machine.

This.  Spin in low gears - 90-110 rpms. You want to exercise your heart, not build heavy legs. I cycled somewhat competitively for about 10 years, climbed a lot of hills and pushed big gears on the flats - built large thighs and calves.  They are now pretty much dead weight on anything overhanging. I now curse my legs more than you can imagine.  

On the other hand, I'm a firm believer in doing what you find fun. It probably won't help your climbing, it will help with approaches. If you like it, do it - but do yourself a favor and spin high rev's in easy gears.

It will help you climb 5.11. It may hurt you trying to climb 5.13 and up. Recovery from strength and power training will be slower if you are running/cycling. Usually climbing specific training is necessary for those climbing in the upper grades (5.12,13,14) and it can be hard/impossible to focus on all types of fitness at once while still seeing gains across the board. Maybe do a 4 week cardio training plan, then switch back to strength and power while trying to maintain your cardio by cycling one short session a week. 

Matt Wells wrote:

General cardio. Pays off on the approach. Unless you have perfect joints and no past injuries you can’t run enough to get the level of cardio you’ll get from cycling. Also, you can’t hike enough unless you already live in the mountains. 

No offense, but this is completely backwards. Cycling will never get you a fraction of the cardio running will. All my  college cycling buddies can't run faster than 8 mins per mile to save their life and they train a pretty ridiculous amount. Even slow easy running wilo help you on approaches far more than cycling will. Also, if you cycle on high resistances you could potentially gain a lot of thigh/glue muscle which doesn't seem very helpful climbing. But yea, no, cycling is pretty shit cardio compared to running or even swimming or xc skiing.

Whisk3rzz 1 wrote:

 no, cycling is pretty shit cardio compared to running or even swimming or xc skiing.

"cardio" is training of the heart; the body doesn't really care what the workload to do it is. I agree that running or hiking or walking would be more specific to an approach and if you want to be a fast runner (or get faster at running), you would want to favor you know: running as your training. But a stationery bike does have the advantage of being done inside... stationery. 

8 min/mile is also not all that bad of a pace, but truthfully is not entirely helpful since it's missing a label. Is that one mile in 8 minutes, or an ultra at 8 min/mile? The first is pedestrian; the second is world class.

I still wouldn't discount cycling - especially if you're starting at 0. To use an anecdote, my jump from cycling to trail running worked out alright. My hill walking shenanigans are  absolutely ridiculous, and is on built a base of long distance cycling.

Whisk3rzz 1 wrote:

No offense, but this is completely backwards. Cycling will never get you a fraction of the cardio running will. All my  college cycling buddies can't run faster than 8 mins per mile to save their life and they train a pretty ridiculous amount. Even slow easy running wilo help you on approaches far more than cycling will. Also, if you cycle on high resistances you could potentially gain a lot of thigh/glue muscle which doesn't seem very helpful climbing. But yea, no, cycling is pretty shit cardio compared to running or even swimming or xc skiing.

Agreed. I've never once heaved on a bike like I have running, not even close.

dsm75 wrote:

I am curious if there is any aspect of cycling that is at all useful for climbing? 

Climbing friend!

There is not.

Long Ranger wrote:

"cardio" is training of the heart; the body doesn't really care what the workload to do it is. I agree that running or hiking or walking would be more specific to an approach and if you want to be a fast runner (or get faster at running), you would want to favor you know: running as your training. But a stationery bike does have the advantage of being done inside... stationery. 

8 min/mile is also not all that bad of a pace, but truthfully is not entirely helpful since it's missing a label. Is that one mile in 8 minutes, or an ultra at 8 min/mile? The first is pedestrian; the second is world class.

I still wouldn't discount cycling - especially if you're starting at 0. To use an anecdote, my jump from cycling to trail running worked out alright. My hill walking shenanigans are  absolutely ridiculous, and is on built a base of long distance cycling.

Agreed, for sure. It's still cardio. And yeah, 8 mins a mile isn't bad at all, but like for elite endurance athletes you'd expect them to at least be able to flirt with 6 minute miles for a couple miles on the bike path like most casual young male runners can. I think a big part of it is you don't have to support your own weight on a bike as you exercise like you do with running or skiing, so even though their cardio is good their body is entirely inefficient at the movement and pulls way too much 02 trying to make up for it. And I think the op mentioned getting a peloton, which hell I sure would use if I had one even if it's not as good as running

Thanks, everyone, for all your thoughts.  Lots of food for thought. I run twice a week for cardio (just 5k), but I'm pretty sure my aerobic fitness is just meh. So I think I'll just try out the peloton to supplement my runs, do semi longer rides 2x a week, and keep it low resistance so as not to beef up the legs.  I'll do that for a month, and see what it does to me/my climbing. 

I moved to Twentynine Palms four months ago and have been getting around primarily by bike (no car, no carpooling due to covid), which includes lots of elevation gain getting into JTNP. I can't say for sure if it's the cycling or just getting used to the rock out here, but I feel like my ability to high step on slab with poor/no hands has improved. My hypothesis is that it's a combination of greater leg strength and better core engagement, but who knows. I think I may have gained some scrambling fitness as well.

The biggest benefit for me, though, is having another activity I enjoy that taps into different physical and psychological strengths than climbing. If I didn't enjoy cycling for its own sake, I'm not sure I'd do it primarily as training for climbing.

Oh, also, you get to confuse people with the ambiguous meaning of the word "climbing" :)

What kind of climbing are you doing? If you're a boulderer, or are looking to redpoint hard sport climbs, cycling is probably not all that useful, and you'd be better off doing more sport-specific exercises to increase strength and power etc. If you do trad climbs that involve long approaches, or especially if you are interested in mountaineering and alpinism, the benefits of cycling would have more crossover. 

As its been pointed out, for training aerobic endurance (AE), running is going to be your best bet, as it most closely imitates the sorts of movement you'd be doing on the latter forms of climbing. But some folks find running to be too intensive on their joints/bodies, and so cycling is a comparatively low impact way to train AE, and also works especially well as a form of active recovery. 

For the most part, unless you're logging serious hours in the saddle or pushing massive gears, cycling is not going to make you a worse climber. It will most likely contribute to a higher level of general fitness, providing you with the base on which to build more sport specific strength and endurance. While there might not be any serious direct crossover for anything other than mountaineering or forms of climbing where long days of continuous low-level output are required, cycling a few times a week I think is a valuable way of establishing your base, especially if one is physically or psychically averse to running.

The huge plus of Peloton is having eye candy to train with, and a community to compete against. Otherwise you're just spinning your wheels, and it gets real boring real fast.

I've never used peloton but I've ridden a lot. I even taught spinning 20 years ago.

There is a fairly specific effort needed to make you chuck. It's got to be practically a sprint but at a level you can sustain a little longer. That's why the 800 meters is a well known vomit race. I imagine that track cycling would do this too. I hear rowing competition is the real place to make you puke. And hard offwidths can get you too.

I was racing my best and climbing seldomly at one point. Climbing came right back. I was super fit, I had great core strength, and had been fighting for position in a peloton for a while. I had the eye of the tiger, a little weaker arms didn't matter. 

Once I got past 11s though, I couldn't have done both. 

For general fitness cycling is great. The sprints in peloton are a lot better than just riding around. I can't think of a fault.

Similar to what has been said above but I went to a talk with Scott Johnson and Steve House (TFUA) and someone asked this question (bit more geared towards general mountain sports not just climbing) but Scott said it has no benefit. My $0.02: if the alternative is nothing then it's better than sitting around. 

Old lady H wrote:

The huge plus of Peloton is having eye candy to train with, and a community to compete against. Otherwise you're just spinning your wheels, and it gets real boring real fast.

I don't use a Peloton or Swift or anything, but when I was on the rollers for days on end, I'd just watch movies. Documentaries, Hong Kong martial arts films, and weirdo Korean films were my favorite. To each his own, really. When I ride for real, I tend to do it alone, so I never am I seeking that social part. Gaming in general is very popular, and the crossover is strong, but those 3D games easily make me nauseous.

Here's a link to a useful thread on the Uphill Athlete site, which has some very helpful and clear answers to your question from some of their coaches:

https://www.uphillathlete.com/forums/topic/cycling-as-a-mean-to-build-aet/

Most of what folks have said here is discussed, although in a bit greater technical detail. Well worth the read!

Thanks, Riley. Yeah, I'm a boulderer and I run 5ks twice a week for cardio, but my aerobic fitness is probably mediocre. So I'm going to throw in 2 easy low resistance peloton sessions a week and just see what that does to my aerobic fitness, climbing, recovery, etc. I'll try it for a month and then reassess. I'm optimistic I might actually like it as a supplemental thing because I do like biking and the peloton is sitting next to my kitchen, so easy access. I'm sure just running extra would be great, but I'm not sure my knees would be able to handle two extra running sessions a week. 

I found the Peloton yoga classes to be very enjoyable