Motorcycle ride

shadoredd

Anyone know why motorcycle riding isn’t considered exercise? It’s more physical than driving and great to get your heart rate up! Any help would be appreciated.

AnnPT77

The Compendium of Physical Activities, a source that compiles research on the relative energy expenditure for various activities (exercise, occupations, etc.) suggests that standard motorcycle riding is only slightly more energy-spending than driving a car or light truck, i.e., 2.8 METS for motorcycle, 2.5 for driving a car. That's not much. (If you're racing motorcycles, that's a whole different question.)

METS are a multiplier of your resting metabolic rate, kind of. This is not exactly right, but close enough to put it in perspective: For me, an hour of motorcycle riding for transportation would be around 164 calories, car around 146. That's NBD arithmetically in a day's calorie calculations.

Keep in mind that your heart rate can go up for reasons that have no correlation with calorie burn. Not being a motorcyclist, I don't know what else would apply there, but some of the generic things that raise heart rate but don't burn meaningful extra calories are stress, physical strain, high emotion, high ambient heat, dehydration, and more. Heart rate doesn't measure calorie burn, it's just a proxy that can be used to estimate it, and it's a better estimator in some circumstances than in others.

METS are a better way of estimating some exercises than others, too. It's complicated.

METS are the underlying method in MFP's exercise database. You can learn more about METS here:

https://sites.google.com/site/compendiumofphysicalactivities/home?authuser=0

And there's a METS-to-calories calculator here:

https://ergo.human.cornell.edu/MetsCaloriesCalculator/MetsCaloriesCalculator.htm

If you're riding a motorcycle for general transportation, you'd want to include that in your MFP activity level estimate, not estimate it separately as an exercise. The MFP activity levels assume some amount of daily life stuff, and the difference between car and motorcycle is likely to be minor enough not to matter in that estimate. All of this stuff is pretty approximate, but close enough to work.

shadoredd

Thank you for all the useful information! It’s appreciated

springlering62

Man if only I could think of Honeybadger’s full user name…..

Jthanmyfitnesspal

Now, riding a dirt bike, that's a bit of work.

But, nothing like riding a pedal-bike. That's where the muscles really come into play.

JBanx256

OK but the real question here is...what kinda bike you you have?

JDavidPugh

JBanx256 wrote: »

OK but the real question here is...what kinda bike you you have?

I second this.........are ya riding a moped to the icecream stand or competing in Super X?

duichaser

I actually found that once and added it to my exercises. My bike is 750 pounds and takes a lot more work to back up than doing it in a car!