Effect of Resistance Levels on Seated and Standing Cycling

Abstract

In general, people may not always ride the bike with one posture, which seems that different resistances would be a reason to change the posture. In view of this, the purpose of this study was to investigate the pedal force and electromyography (EMG) with two riding postures (seated and standing) in three levels of resistances (low, middle and high). Twelve subjects rode on a stationary bike, which a force sensor mounted on the right pedal and surface EMG was used to acquire the data from right leg. The parameters, including peak pedal force, impulse, peak EMG and integrated EMG were analyzed. Resistance was defined by the mechanism of brake from stationary bike and pedaling cadence was restricted to 50 rpm in all trials. A two-way repeated measures ANOVA was used to detect the significant differences. Our results showed that as resistance increased, seated posture displayed an increased trend in pedal force, impulse, EMG. However, standing posture was different compared to seated posture. Standing posture showed higher pedal force and impulse than seated posture at low and middle resistances, but pedal force and impulse of both postures were close to each other at high resistance. Further contrasting with EMG data, standing posture was higher than seated posture at low resistance, but standing posture displayed a smaller activation compared to seated posture at middle and high resistance. In general, seated posture could save strength at light resistance because of less muscle loading than standing posture. However, at heavy resistance, standing posture had better efficiency than seated posture, because cyclist could ride more unhindered by body weight from standing posture. This study concludes that cyclist could adopt this information, when facing different levels of resistances.