I got fitter. Was out riding more and was also riding a lot harder than I did on the normal bike (checked via HR watch) as knew that the motor would back me up if I ran out of legs. Also found I didn’t stop as much (i.e. at the end of a climb before a descent).
Would ride for the same amount of time, just do a lot more distance, a lot more descents and take less breaks.
Though, this is not true if out with other folks as I’m the only one I know with an eBike.

I generally ride it in Eco mode (Shimano one).

Still do my normal rides around town or road/bike paths too.

I always refer to the length of a ride I’m going on in terms of hours, not distance. Don’t most MTBers do that?

Nah, football pitches.

IMO if you are already a fit rider they won’t help your fitness improve.

In my case though having had a few problems over the past few years, getting an ebike has been very beneficial, before I was going out for just a hour a week struggling up the hill, and not even enjoying the downhill bits because I was so wasted by the uphill’s I was too knackered to ride them properly

in fact I have now added an e gravel bike for fitness work over the winter, it allows me to get out for 4+ hour rides on a Sunday with friends that just wasn’t possible before.

A mate loaned me an older Turbo Levo to help me in my recovery from 15 months of long covid. It was brilliant for that, allowed me to ride local trails, and run a half-reasonable HR on local Peak District climbs. As I got fitter, I started to ride normal bikes again, which is hard – no-one tells you this, but e-bikes disguise the dead spot in the pedal stroke very effectively – and rode more and more in a low eco setting, which made things harder work, but still easier than a proper bike.

If you think hooning around everywhere in a turbo/boost setting is going to have a marked impact on fitness then you’re basically delusional ime. If you run a low enough setting that you’re getting the same fitness stimulus as you would from a normal bike, then why bother with an e-bike at all. But it depends on how fit you are / want to be I think.

I haven’t touched the e-bike for a month now. I’ve been on the cross bike and the road bike and the mountain bike and they’re all brilliant. For me, once the novelty and rehab benefits of the e-bike had worn off, I wasn’t that fussed. Then again I like ups and hammering flatter stuff and the downs equally as much and I like being properly fit.

They’re also bastard heavy to lift over stiles and gates. And I hate having a limited battery range. I like being able to ride for as long as my legs last. Oh, and the noise, the Levo is pretty quiet, but one of the reasons I ride bikes is to escape from noise and artifice, not to embrace more of it and inflict it on other people too.

My take: if riding an e-bike improves your fitness then you’re probably ill or recovering or not very fit to start off with. Nothing wrong with any of that, I was that person, but all the bunkum about turning the motor off and riding unassisted? How slow are your group rides?

I don’t own one and haven’t ridden one, but….

A friend has one, due to his fight with cancer he doesn’t have the energy to ride a mountain bike, so bought an ebike. He happily admits it takes a lot less effort to ride than a bike.

Another buddy has one, due to a knee injury. I rode with him and his 4 or 5 buddies all on ebikes. Me on a bike. It was a great ride, but I had to work hard to keep up. Pretty much all of them didn’t crack a sweat over the entire ride.

Obviously this is just two examples and everyone is different, but I think you would have to be really committed to actually blow yourself out on a regular basis whilst riding an ebike. So the chances of improving fitness are slim, unless you literally start with zero (IMO obvs!)

I’m currently hiring an ebike for a few day debating getting one.

The rides I’ve done so far have been brutal, ie lapping as fast as possible with no breaks, I can see this improving the fitness I care about, man handling the bike, I basically keep fit and strong so I can feel good when I’m uplifting or messing around on the jump bike bmx style. I find it easy to get pedal fit on a normal bike, but it’s usually via saving energy not messing about. So for my fitness purposes, I can see an ebike increasing my fitness.

Whether I hammer the laps once the evike novelty has worn off is another matter

Got a couple of mates who went E about a year back, and they say it’s had no negative impact on their fitness, but the pair of them were blowing big time halfway round The Wall at Afan on their normal blkes, when previously they’d managed fine. Make your own mind up on this one.

“They’re also bastard heavy to lift over stiles and gates.”

They’re not really, they’re not much heavier than an empty barbell and a similar weight to my six year old, both easy things to lift.

“all the bunkum about turning the motor off and riding unassisted? How slow are your group rides?”

There’s one faster one which can be pretty fast, that I’d only take my hardtail on. And one more social one which is fine either way. There’s plenty of MTBers that weigh 1.5 stone more than me, so if they can keep up with the group uphill, why can’t I with an unpowered Levo? If I have the power on for a significant proportion of a group ride it feels far too easy to be satisfying.

If you think hooning around everywhere in a turbo/boost setting is going to have a marked impact on fitness then you’re basically delusional ime.

Yeah, I should probably have said ‘a marked impact on cardio vascular fitness’ shouldn’t I.

I would also chime in and say no better, or worse. But then I ride it depending how I feel. Most of the time I put as much effort in as a normal bike ride, I just do more laps, or more trails.

Sometimes I turbo it for fun, and I have even raced it recently.

I will echo what others say if you ride it a lot, a normal bike can feel weird in a few ways. It can feel like you are pedalling through treacle on the ups (when you are just riding at a normal/decent pace) and it can feel skittish at speed on the way down.

I will caveat and say I’m a reasonably fit person anyway.

You can make it as hard or as easy as you want to. It just happens quicker with an eeb!

They’re not really, they’re not much heavier than an empty barbell and a similar weight to my six year old, both easy things to lift.

You have an unloaded barbell that weighs over 20kg? Anyway, whatever you say. I think ebikes are fine, but the way owners keep jumping through convoluted hoops to justify them is a bit weird, ymmv etc.

“the way owners keep jumping through convoluted hoops to justify them is a bit weird”

I suspect that like many things in life, these opinions say more about the observer than the subject.

whenever I take non-MTB friends on rides, be that folks who can cycle but don’t do anything regularly or sometimes roadies who’re pretty fast on a road bike, the one comment that all of them make at some point is just how hard in terms of CV output, MTB is. MTB is a difficult sport because of the high fitness entry barrier. e-MTBs were invented  partly to overcome that.

So I’m with BWD, if it means you’re getting out more, you’ll get fitter, or recovering, they’ll help with that, but i you ride a non assisted bike normally, and start to ride a e-MTB regularly, your fitness will decline.

“ i you ride a non assisted bike normally, and start to ride a e-MTB regularly, your fitness will decline.”

On forums I always appreciate how valuable opinions are over experience…

I hear no-one has ever got fit using a rowing machine or exercise bike because they don’t go anywhere and you can turn the resistance right down so it’s super easy.

Just to be clear, I think you could lose most of your pedalling fitness if you swap a normal MTB for an eMTB and then just let the motor tow you around – in turbo on a Levo you can spin the pedals with minimum pressure and it whizzes along. But without changing mode you can also push the pedals really hard, make your muscles hurt, lungs blow and send your heart rate through the roof.

The choice is entirely yours. If you don’t care about your fitness and take the easy way on an eMTB then you’ll have a horrible time when you get back on a normal bike. If you want to keep fit and strong then you can do so on an eMTB.

I’ve spent way more hours on my Levo than my hardtail over the last three years and I’ve not lost any fitness at all. I’m actually quicker at the moment because when the gym shut I couldn’t lift heavy so I lost muscle mass but I didn’t get fat and being about a stone lighter makes me quicker uphill. Since the gym reopened I’ve been training differently because im enjoying the cycling benefits of being a bit lighter.

If you can buy a bike that means you don’t need to put in the effort, but still have that fun, folks will. I’m not having a go cheif, but I don’t think most folks buy an e-MTB and ride them like you do, with the motor turned off for large parts of the ride. They’ve bought a bike that will make it easier fro them for a reason. Those people aren’t going back to a regular bike, lots of them last had a regular bike 20 years ago, and have no intention of buying another.

The barrier to mountain biking isn’t price. It’s fitness, Mountain biking is hard, for it to be enjoyable you have to be pretty fit, and without realising it, most regular bikers if you’re doing say a 3hr, 20mile ride with a couple of thousand feet of climbing and that’s a “normal weekend ride” for you, you’re perhaps in the top half maybe even in the top 20% of the population when it comes to aerobic fitness. Lots and lots of folk get out of breath just climbing the stairs.

There’s lots of folk, especially on sites like this who think the barrier to entry is money, and while that is for some folks for the industry as a whole, the 5 figure price point is nothing, they’ve be selling those bikes for decades now. Those bikes sell. So as an Industry the barrier to more sales isn’t money, it’s the effort it takes punters to get the reward. Take away that requirement…and bingo, It’s no wonder that you can’t buy an e-MTB now

“If you can buy a bike that means you don’t need to put in the effort, but still have that fun, folks will.”

Yes, absolutely true. But that wasn’t the question and that wasn’t what I was answering. I’m saying you can buy and ride an eMTB without it negatively affecting your MTB fitness.

I wouldn’t say either. It’s a means to an end and I enjoy riding it, especially the ease of riding uphill, which was always the killer for me.

Like, dont like, we’ve had those same whining arguments on the introduction of full suspension frames, on 27.5″ and then 29″ wheels. of this and of that, and probably as far back as old steel bicycles from the 1900’S

Any exercise is good exercise, and better than no exercise.

you have to be pretty fit, and without realising it, most regular bikers if you’re doing say a 3hr, 20mile ride with a couple of thousand feet of climbing and that’s a “normal weekend ride” for you, you’re perhaps in the top half maybe even in the top 20% of the population when it comes to aerobic fitness. Lots and lots of folk get out of breath just climbing the stairs.

That’s an intresting question about the fitness of mountain bikers. I’d say I’m around minimum fitness to go for a mountain bike ride maybe a bit above minimum. Stavas says kind of average for a mountain biker really really slow on the road. But at a have a go local triathlon i think i was 5th of 25 on the bike leg on my gravel bike (50 55 age group). So yes maybe top 20%. Maybe higher, shorely the really unfit aren’t entering triathlons

I have started commuting with an ebike but it is so easy to reach the cut off point of 26kmph that it ends up being spinning training session on a really heavy bike. My mountain bike feels so nice and light in comparison. So my advice would be to ditch the car. Commute on an ebike

if you ride a non assisted bike normally, and start to ride a e-MTB regularly, your fitness will decline.

That’s not my experience.

I’ve probably ridden my eeb on about 40-50% of this year’s rides and I am around the same fitness as before I had an eeb. Not at my absolute peak, but my usual standard fitness of not particularly seriously training but just going out whenever possible.

Surely fitness will go up because as a result of buying a bike to do ‘more laps’, you’ll be doing a lot more trail work 😉

Surely fitness will go up because as a result of buying a bike to do ‘more laps’, you’ll be doing a lot more trail work 😉

I do plenty digging, if only yer average MTBet did a wee bit now and again, we’re a selfish lazy lot, eeb or neeb.

I hear no-one has ever got fit using a rowing machine or exercise bike because they don’t go anywhere and you can turn the resistance right down so it’s super easy.

Any exercise is good exercise, and better than no exercise.

Both missing the point there. This question is not exercise versus no exercise, it is exercise versus a similar but easier form of the same exercise.
It is all about effort rather than distance or time. I could ride a road bike at 10mph for 2 hours or do the same ride at 20mph for 1 hour. The 1 hour ride will use more energy and increase my fitness more – at 10mph I would be coasting most of the way round and at 20mph I would be going as hard as I can.
I would be getting some exercise in both scenarios and even the 2 hour ride would be better than sitting on the sofa.

“it is exercise versus a similar but easier form of the same exercise”

Actually, you’re missing the point. Because this is the point:

“It is all about effort rather than distance or time”

This is it. It’s about effort. And with an ebike that’s a personal choice.

Claiming you can’t ride an ebike and be fit is as stupid as claiming that you can’t ride a bike with gears and be fit compared to someone riding a singlespeed. Just because a singlespeed requires a higher minimum level of fitness (for hilly trails) than a geared bike, so too a normal bike requires a higher minimum level of fitness than an ebike. But that doesn’t mean that everyone riding a singlespeed is fitter than everyone riding with gears. The same is true for ebikes.

Bikes are far more efficient for covering distance than legs. Does that mean all cyclists are less fit than walkers or runners?

Claiming you can’t ride an ebike and be fit

Nobody is saying that. Of course you can be as fit and ride an eMTB and and regular bike. The point I’m making is that now folks don’t have to be, they have a choice. They can just hop on a eMTB and have all the fun without having to do all the effort, and for lots of folk, that’ll be an attractive alternative.

And for the manufacturers it opens up a whole new market for their products.

It’s certainly noticeable that many ebikers seem to be over-dressed for the conditions. I’ve just assumed that this is because they’re not working so hard.

From an absolutely scientific observation, I went on a ride with two friends who have only used E-bikes for maybe the 6-8 months and we’re wondering if they were gonna keep their normal bikes, they seemed as fit as usual but their leg strength definitely seemed a lot less.
Not sure which is worse now, the whine of a motor on a climb or them going on about how much their legs hurt after a couple of climbs!

Claiming you can’t ride an ebike and be fit…

That’s not really the point that people are making though.

The point is that most people won’t put in as much effort on an ebike. Yes, we know you *can* – but realistically, that’s not how people ride them.

Incredible that people are claiming that bicycles are only for getting or keeping fit on. How entitled 😆

“It’s certainly noticeable that many ebikers seem to be over-dressed for the conditions. I’ve just assumed that this is because they’re not working so hard.”

This is absolutely correct. If you put on too many clothes on a ride, on a ebike you have the option of choosing to be lazy so you don’t overheat. Again, it comes down to personal choices. If you wear the same as on a normal bike then you have to put the effort in to stop yourself freezing in the winter.

“That’s not really the point that people are making though.”

Yes, the point people are repeatedly making is that you can be lazy on an ebike. This is not surprising news. But the question was “Has your fitness got worse since buying an eMtb?”

And the answer to that, for me, after three years of ownership and the majority of mileage on the ebike, is no.

Cardio fitness is similar, speed uphill is a bit quicker because I’m now lighter (nothing to do with the ebike), strength is higher (partially to do with the ebike), flexibility is better (nothing to do with the ebike). And considering I’ve gained a third child during that time period, I think that makes a good case for ebikes not inevitably making you less fit.

And the answer to that, for me, after three years of ownership and the majority of mileage on the ebike, is no.

I don’t know why you feel the need to make making the same point that no-one has disputed Chief. The debate has just moved on a bit from the OP, something that threads like these sometimes do. Chill.

I’m interested in the ebike commute as currently I go 3-4 days per week by normal bike and it kills me for Friday- Sunday when I could be riding for fun. I have got fitter since riding every day but still, 6-8 hours a week is a fair bit of riding.
I wonder if an e bike for commutes would mean I’d turn those junk but tiring miles into easier spinning recovery/ base and then be fresh enough to do some harder rides on my days off?

I wonder if an e bike for commutes would mean I’d turn those junk but tiring miles into easier spinning recovery/ base and then be fresh enough to do some harder rides on my days off?

This would appear to be logical.

I don’t see why this is at all controversial. We have one completely scientific study by a respected bike company showing that riding e-bikes means you eat less because you are putting in less effort. I mean, it’s not like they’d be presenting the data in a way that would make e-bikes seem an attractive option to the less fit, is it?

If you can accept that (unless it’s hilly or windy) an ebike won’t provide motor assistance at road bike speeds, then it’s not a bad idea. Even on massive knobbly tyres as soon as the road flattens I’m pedalling past the motor cut-out speed when commuting.

It’s really nice to let the bike do the work when your legs need a break the morning after a proper MTB ride, or when you’re not feeling well enough to pedal hard (I’ve been in consecutive virus hell for the last 3 weeks!), or to keep them fresh for tonight’s/tomorrow’s big ride.

However, if you’re used to commuting in Lycra at proper roadie speeds then you might find an ebike quite annoying because of the 15.5mph limit on the assistance.

I have a couple of frioends who purchased ebikes 4 years ago. I have never seen them fitter, weight loss and an increase in muscle mass, they ride ALL the time. Oh and when they get back on their analogue bikes theyre still quicker. Its not about the bike its about the person.

It certainly helped me to overcome a knee injury and get me to some kind of fitness where I started riding my other bike more. Went on it for the first time in months today and remembered how it gets you out on those shitty headwind/mud slog days.

Has your fitness got worse since buying an eMtb?

Dunno, I haven’t ridden my normal bike since I got the ebike. I keep thinking ill just take the normal bike out on this ride, and then I think balls to that, and just go out on the ebike again.

Incredible that people are claiming that bicycles are only for getting or keeping fit on.

That is a primary purpose for a lot of people (not everyone commutes or goes shopping on their bike) but I mostly ride because I enjoy riding bikes and have done for 50 years. The fitness part is a very good by product. If I didn’t enjoy cycling I would probably not do a lot of exercise and be even less fit than the average ebiker.

I ride more on my eeb. I’m probably about the same fitness. But different fitness. Not the cardio fitness I used to have but more I’ve been at a bike park uplifting all day fitness.

I never ride my eeb in boost/turbo. I run the lowest settings in the power bands (e8000 motor). Boost is just stupid even in the lowest settings.