Dr. Andy Galpin

The score on the treadmill is going to be about 10% or so higher than it is on the bike.

And that's simply because there's a small increase in the amount of muscles involved when it comes to running versus cycling.

Now, if you are specifically trained on the bike and you cycle a lot, that may not actually be the case.

And in fact, highly endurance trained folks on site and cyclists rather will score higher on a VO2 max test than

the bike than they will on a treadmill but that really is now coming down to test specificity efficiency like other things that are that's not what we're trying to talk about here and so generally the more muscles involved the more oxygen being utilized the higher that vo2 max so when it comes to training we want to think about the same thing the exercise mode i don't want to say it doesn't matter it is relevant

But you have unlimited options.

If you want to bike or swim or cycle or row, that's great.

If you don't like any of those traditional modalities and you want to use something like an assault bike or pull a sled, run uphill, drag something, those are also incredibly viable options.

It's not the exercise per se that determines the adaptation.

It's the application of the exercise, right?

The body works and physiology works on a principle called the SED principle, which stands S-A-I-D, which stands for specific adaptation to imposed demand.

So you put a demand on a tissue,

to bring in and utilize oxygen at a high rate, it will adapt that specific demand.

So challenging your muscles continuously to bring in and utilize oxygen at a rapid rate is all fundamentally that needs to happen for you improve that.

And so again, the mode of the exercise is not that big of a deal.

If you are new to exercise, I would generally recommend you being careful of exercises that involve a lot of eccentric action.

So jumping and landing because you're gonna get really sore really fast.

But if not, feel free to choose whatever exercise modality or combination of them.

Switch it up a little bit.

Do some cycling.