Cycling Burns More Than Double the Calories of Walking—and Other Differences Between the Two Workouts
Let’s start with the important stuff: Any exercise is good exercise. In a world obsessed with optimizing every detail of our lives, it can be too easy to get caught up in which workout is best for weight loss or muscle gain or whatever else. In truth, the best exercise is the kind you will do consistently.
That said, it’s natural to compare workout types, and if you have specific fitness goals, you’re probably wondering about the most efficient way to meet them.
Cycling and walking are both excellent options for daily physical activity, and which one is best for you depends on an array of factors.
To help you understand more about the differences between cycling and walking, we consulted fitness experts to break down how each affects VO2 max, endurance, weight loss, and more.
Cycling vs. Walking: How They Stack Up for Different Stats
There are several notable differences between cycling and walking and how they affect your body. Understanding how each type of exercise affects your muscles, bones, joints, and overall health and fitness can help you decide which activity to try.
Muscles Used
Overall, walking and cycling have similar primary movers: the quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves. But if you look a little closer, there are numerous differences in the biomechanics of these two activities.
For starters, according to one study, treadmill walking recruited more muscle engagement from the tibialis anterior (muscle along the shin bone) compared to cycling, and cycling recruited more muscle engagement from the gastrocnemius (calf muscle).
For example, walking utilizes muscles that either create rotation or control rotation more than cycling, Milica McDowell, D.P.T., physical therapist, gait educator, and certified exercise physiologist tells Bicycling. Examples include your hip and shoulder rotator muscles: “When walking, your arms naturally swing and your legs naturally rotate in and out from the hip when swinging your leg or when standing on your leg,” she says. “With cycling, this rotary motion is essentially removed and those muscles aren’t acting to help propel the bike.” (Though you do need some anti-rotational strength to maintain forward motion.)
Additionally, your spinal extensors (low and middle back muscles) work differently in cycling compared to walking. When walking, your spinal muscles maintain a more neutral position and hold your torso upright. When cycling, depending on the position you hold and the type of bike you ride, your spinal extensors may be flexed (rounded) or neutral. For instance, on a bike like a cruiser, you’ll sit largely upright and the handlebars will help take some of the load off of your spine. On a road bike or triathlon bike, though, your back muscles will work hard to support your hinge position.
Depending on the terrain and inclines, cycling can recruit more core and upper-body muscles, compared to walking. You rely on your arms for balance and handling (especially when mountain biking), while maneuvering turns requires core engagement. Both sports require gluteal activation, more so at specific points, like when walking uphill and when you increase your cadence on the bike.
The long and short of it: Walking and cycling both primarily work the lower body musculature, but in different ways.
Joint Impact
Joint impact with walking is greater than joint impact with cycling, McDowell says. “When walking, you experience greater forces on your body. This includes the force of gravity pushing down on your entire body weight, as well as a force called ground reaction force, which is essentially the force of the earth pushing back up against your body,” she says.
On the contrary, when cycling, you are offsetting some of these forces because you maintain a seated position with a portion of your bodyweight in your arm/hands on the handlebars, McDowell says. This reduces the load on the lower body, so large joints like hips, knees, and spine receive comparably less impact.
“It’s hard to definitively say whether a person with hip, knee, or back pain would get better results from walking or cycling, so my advice is to try a little of both,” McDowell says. “Cross-training is a best bet for keeping your body balanced and your mind sharp, so trying a little of both activities is a great way to keep your workouts varied and not get stuck in a rut.”
Fitness Outcomes
Though cycling and walking by-and-large use the same muscles, they can have very different effects on your overall fitness.
VO2 Max
In healthy but untrained individuals, regular walking at moderate intensities can lead to a modest improvement in VO2 max. However, the VO2 max benefits of cycling can be greater than the VO2 max benefits of walking, because cycling can generally be performed at a higher intensity for longer durations than walking, McDowell says.
“It’s a lot harder to create progression with walking, because there’s a limited capability to increase before it turns to a running cadence,” McDowell says. Cycling, on the other hand, lends itself to higher intensities for longer periods of time, thus it creates more room for improvement than walking does.
This is especially true for trained individuals. Those who already have a high level of cardiovascular fitness are highly unlikely to experience any improvement in VO2 max from walking, because it doesn’t provide the proper stimulus—a.k.a., walking doesn’t challenge the cardiovascular system enough in fit individuals. On the other hand, cycling presents an opportunity for higher-intensity training that can lead to VO2 max improvement.
Endurance
If someone is looking to improve endurance (broadly, your ability to move your body consistently over long periods of time), walking and cycling will pretty equally improve the endurance of someone who is deconditioned or just starting out, McDowell says. But walking has diminishing returns: At a point, unless you start racewalking or hiking, endurance gains will stall because humans can only walk so fast until it turns into jogging, and that’s an entirely separate activity that affects the body differently.
While one could argue that cycling, too, has a limit as far as endurance is concerned, the average recreational cyclist isn’t going to reach that limit. “In terms of endurance performance goals, cycling is much more effective at challenging the muscles and improving strength and endurance,” says Cassandra Padula Burke, certified personal trainer, USAT Level 1 triathlon coach, and RRCA-certified running coach, “partly because cycle training is typically performed for longer periods and at varied intensity whether training on the road or on a bike trainer.”
So, if you’re looking for a sport with a lot of potential to increase your endurance, cycling is the better draw than walking.
Strength and Hypertrophy
Frankly, neither walking or cycling is the best way to get stronger or build muscle. Both are primarily aerobic activities that lend themselves to endurance adaptations, not hypertrophic (muscle growth) ones. Weight training is the ideal exercise modality for building strength and muscle.
That said, someone who is a completely new to exercise can and likely will experience an increase in strength and muscle mass when they start walking or cycling. This is also true for older adults, according to some research. In general, however, a high volume of cycling at high intensities—that is, lots of lactate threshold training and sprints—is required for muscle growth and strength.
Walking is unlikely to build muscle in individuals who already have a high level of fitness, because it isn’t challenging enough to initiate the muscle-building process in highly trained muscle fibers. Walking can help combat muscle loss in older adults. However, it’s more effective when performed in conjunction with a resistance training program, according to a study that followed older adults through 10 weeks of training and compared walking training only to combined walking and resistance training and examined muscle growth over the 10-week period.
Burke says that cycling may produce results faster than walking, if fat loss/muscle gain is what you’re looking for. “Since cycling requires more engagement of the leg muscles and more power to propel yourself physically through space than walking, you will see faster gains in your aerobic capacity, muscle strength, and muscular endurance by cycling,” she says.
Progression Potential
Walking has less room for improvement than cycling, unless you’re interested in eventually running, hiking, or racewalking. “For most individuals, if you walk faster than about four miles per hour (a 15-minute mile pace), you’ll most likely have to transition to a running cadence,” McDowell says, “which could potentially lead to an exercise progression plateau, unless you want to start running.”
Of course, you can always try things like including more hills or steeper hills in your walking route, adding resistance by carrying light weights or wearing a weighted vest, or incorporating fast walking intervals, says Burke.
With cycling, there’s a high ceiling for progression and many more ways to incrementally improve. Even with years of consistent, purposeful training, the abilities of recreational cyclists don’t compare to those of elite cyclists—that’s not to be discouraging, but to speak to the impressive progression potential within the sport of cycling.
Workout selection, for example, is seemingly limitless. You can choose an area of improvement—aerobic capacity, lactate threshold, VO2 max, FTP, etc.—and tailor your workout program around that specific marker.
Calorie Burn
Calorie burn during exercise is highly variable and dependent on a number of factors, including your bodyweight, body composition, environmental conditions (namely heat and altitude), exercise intensity, terrain, and more.
For fairness’ sake, we’ll compare walking and cycling using METs, or metabolic equivalents. A MET is a unit of measurement used to describe how many calories an activity burns relative to calorie burn at rest (one MET is equivalent to complete rest).
The tables below show calorie burn per hour for light, moderate, and vigorous walking and cycling. At all intensities, cycling burns more calories per hour than walking for a 150-pound person, according to the Compendium of Physical Activities. (Calculations were made using the Cornell METs calculator).
Calories Burned Cycling
*Based on a one-hour workout for a 150-pound person
Light Intensity: Cycling at about <10-11.9 mph at a leisure, slow, light effort = 6.8 MET = 464 calories per hour
Moderate Intensity: Cycling at about 12-13.9 mph, leisure, moderate effort = 8.0 MET = 546 calories per hour
High Intensity: Cycling at about 14-15.9+ mph, racing or leisure, fast, vigorous effort = 10.0 MET = 682 calories per hour
Calories Burned Walking
*Based on a one-hour workout for a 150-pound person
Light Intensity: Walking at about 2.5 mph on a firm, level surface = 3.0 MET = 205 calories per hour
Moderate Intensity: Walking at about 2.8 to 3.4 mph on a first, level surface = 3.8 MET = 259 calories per hour
High Intensity: Walking at about 3.5 to 3.9 mph at a brisk pace on a first surface = 4.8 MET = 327 calories per hour
Weight Loss
Even though cycling burns more calories per hour at any given bodyweight, McDowell says that individuals pursuing weight loss may be best served by starting a walking program first. For one thing, walking is “considerably less costly,” she says, and “the risk of injury is considerably lower than riding a bike. If someone is more deconditioned and perhaps has weaker muscles or poor balance, riding a bike might be unsafe to start with.”
Many people may also find walking easier to stick with, as it requires little gear and can be done almost anywhere. Walkers can make their workouts more effective for weight loss by incorporating brisk intervals, hills, and gradually extending the duration of their walks.
Burke adds that walking can be an effective low-impact option especially if you are just getting back to a fitness routine or returning to training after surgery. If you’re returning to exercise post-injury, follow the guidelines your healthcare provider or physical therapist has given you.
Those who don’t have any contraindications to biking—injuries, balance, cost of gear, or safe access—can choose whichever type of exercise they’re most likely to stick with over the long haul. Adherence, or the ability to maintain consistency, is one of the most important factors in successful weight loss.
Gear, Access, and Safety
Walking is the more accessible form of exercise from an economic standpoint. Whereas bikes cost a few hundred dollars minimum (even used), walking requires nothing but proper footwear and comfortable clothing, which many people already have. Plus, you can walk almost anywhere: You can do it on your lunch hour, during your childrens’ sport practices, and while you’re traveling.
The primary disadvantage of cycling compared to walking is the up-front monetary investment. You need not just a bike, but a helmet, safety lights, and a bike lock, at minimum. It’s also not safe to cycle on all roads or sidewalks, which means some people may need a bike rack and a vehicle to transport their bike somewhere it’s safe to ride.
Indoor Training Options
When the weather is poor or it’s otherwise not wise to exercise outdoors, both walking and cycling can be done indoors. Walking, again, is more accessible: Though a treadmill is ideal for indoor training, you can certainly walk laps around your home, up and down your stairs if you have them, and/or around your apartment complex (no judgment!). Cycling, on the other hand, requires a stationary bike or indoor bike trainer.
Cycling vs. Walking: Which One Is Right for You?
All aerobic activity, including walking and cycling, improves cardiovascular health, Burke says. Both have potential to improve musculoskeletal health, including modest strength and muscle gains, especially in people who are new to exercise and older adults.
Either type of exercise, if you stick with it, will ultimately improve your overall health and fitness. Below is a recap of some key points for each activity.
Cycling
More room for VO2 max improvement
More room for improving endurance
Can be cost-prohibitive
Not everyone has a safe place to ride
Burns more calories
Non-weight-bearing exercise may be better for knee and ankle pain
Workout selection is virtually endless
Walking
Less room for fitness improvement over time
Great for bone health
Can walk almost anywhere (even inside without a treadmill)
Doesn’t require special equipment
Great for re-entry into fitness after a break
Gentle on the joints
Not as many ways to progress
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