Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Yes, that makes sense. But the machine should be able to accurately measure how much work you did, which is the minimum your body burned. If you could trust machines to get that right (which I'm not sure you can), then that number would be useful as a comparison for a single person across different workouts.
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I think the machines these days can fairly accurate how many watts you have produced. And you can definitely use watt meters to effectively assess your workouts against each other. But the part where the machine should be able to accurately measure how much work you did is where we are talking about different things, I think. Different people need to work different amounts to produce a watt. For example, look at this estimate of how many calories you burn sustaining certain watt levels depending on your weight.
http://www.fitnessforweightloss.com/...ationary-bike/
Significant differences in calories burned while sustaining the same watts depending just on how much you weigh. And even these numbers are just a loose approximation, because a 200 lb person with 35% body fat is going to burn a different amount of calories than a 200 lb person with 6% body fat.
