How different is recumbent cycling from upright?

Equipment
2

85-95% if I had to take a guess.

But it will feel like 50% when you first hop back onto an upright. Given 3-6 weeks back on an upright your muscles will re-adapt and you’ll be good to go, assuming no orthopedic limitations.

It’s worth doing, for sure.

Rationale for my estimations:

  • Cardiovascular fitness doesn’t have much positional specificity, if any.
  • Muscular endurance and power are very joint angle specific and easily fatigable if not trained in their specific future use.
  • The primarily limiter of cycling performance is cardiovascular.
  • Muscular endurance and power transfer to new joint angles is faster than building it from scratch, by a fair margin.
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