Is riding a bike good excercise to get in shape for football?

cubsrock2516: Is riding a bike good excercise to get in shape for football?
I just started riding my bike because i need to get in shape for football. I tried running but im lazy and hate it. Say if I ran a mile, would riding a bike 4 miles be the same? Is it a good idea to ride a bike instead of running?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Kelli
I would say no. You should probably do some jogging, sprinting and weight lifting as well.

Answer by Civil
Bike riding is one of the best activities for overall conditioning. But, you have to challenge yourself
with an aggressive bike workout, using hills,
sprints, etc. Bike racers are some of the best
conditioned athletes, along with soccer players
and swimmers. You also need to alternate bike
workouts with the usual weight training to be fully
prepared for football.

Answer by Ron S
It depends on what position you play. Are you a linebacker? Then probably not as much as if you were a running back. But, cycling does train your cardio and help you become less lazy since it gets you off the couch. Instead of measuring by distance, train by effort and time. So, if you want to lose weight and train your endurance, ride a bike at 60-70% of your effort for 1hr instead of running. But, in the end you want to use running to help you train, since you don’t use a bike on the football field.

Answer by Drewkulele
Well, yes and no… It’s a great way to get in shape generally, especially since it’s low impact, as opposed to running, but there’s also something called “the laws of specificity” (see link, below) which just means that training in one sport does NOT necessarily improve your performance in another sport because the very specific muscles used in, say, football, are not really getting trained correctly when you, say, ride a bike or swim or whatever.

So, yes, ride that bike to trim down and get in shape, but for specific football training, only actually playing football will do.

Answer by Chase
it depends if you are road biking or mountain biking, and how hard you are pushing youself. Any exercise is better than none, but I would say your best bet is to run and lift for football