*Author’s note: Usually I aim these blog posts at my clients and the general public but today’s is a special edition, aimed at other coaches & fitness professionals in the “e-bikes are a joke because it’s not real biking” crowd 🙂
As a fitness professional, my job is to help people become as fit and healthy as possible. Some of that is done in the gym, but I only get most clients for 2-5 hours per week. We can make huge strides in that gym time, for sure — but the lion’s share of their health and fitness is going to be decided in the hundred-plus hours each week outside the gym, and the habits they’ve cultivated there. One of the most surefire ways for people to get healthier and feel better, is to move their body more frequently throughout the week outside the gym.
It disappoints me greatly to see so many other fitness coaches — some of whom I know and respect greatly — going out of their way to belittle people who ride e-bikes, and spread that hate online. I think this is incredibly misinformed and from a client-centric, “let’s get the world healthier” standpoint is just wrong.
Here’s a few reasons why I think fitness coaches should be advocating for e-bikes, not mocking them.
- It makes cycling more accessible. A great example of this is one of our personal training clients, Katie. She’s in her mid 70s and is very fit! However, for her first few years at the gym she always drove to her sessions instead of riding her bike, because there’s a few big hills on the route and the uphills were just too much for her to handle. Since she got an e-bike, she can now ride her bike to her personal training sessions with no issues. That’s an extra couple hours of movement in her life, every single week for half the year. That is a hugely beneficial change!
- You still have to pedal the bike. Yes, there are some models of e-bike that don’t really require you to pedal at all and are basically just low power motorcycles. However, most e-bikes use powered assistance. The motor only kicks in if you’re pedaling. So even if you have it set to its highest assistance level, you’re still pedaling the bike, and if you stop pedaling the assistance stops. Circling back to point #1 — this makes hills and distances that were previous untenable, now doable for a large portion of the population — especially older folks who are looking for low-impact exercise! It opens up so many more possibilities for cyclists of all different fitness levels. Would you rip on someone in your gym who is using assistance to practice pull ups? I hope not. So why would you scoff at someone who needs some assistance to get up a hill on their bike? They’re out there doing it! And doing it with assistance is better than not doing it at all, hands down!
- E-bikes take cars off the road. Someone who used to commute to work/school/the/gym that is now able to bike because of the advent of the e-bike, means this person is not driving a car on the road for that ride anymore. This means less congestion on the roads, fewer carbon emissions, plus all the health benefits of riding a bike. There’s a mom at my son’s school with an electric trike that has a bench seat on the back, so she can bike her three kiddos from Minneapolis to Saint Paul on beautiful spring mornings like today’s. She gets exercise, they’re all outside, the kids love it, it’s one fewer car on the road during rush hour. What’s not to love about that?
I invite you to go rent one for an hour or two from your local bike shop and give it a try. If nothing else, they’re really freaking fun to ride! And last time I checked, it’s okay to do something just because it’s fun and for no other reason.
In my book, anything that’s going to help people be outside more, move their bodies more, and sit in traffic less is absolutely a good thing. I hope other folks in the fitness industry will start to see it the same way.
I absolutely love to ride my bike. It feels like absolute freedom. I want everyone to be able to experience that, and e-bikes are helping a lot more new people get into it for the first time and make it an everyday part of their lives. It’s a win all around.
Here’s Katie rocking her e-bike after her personal training session today! What a badass!
