EASY WAYS TO GET FIT USING AN EXERCISE BIKE

What is an exercise bike?

An exercise bike is a stationary piece of gym and fitness equipment resembling an ordinary bicycle but designed to used indoors and does not move further.

How much space it needs? Definitely lesser than any other cardio equipment! It takes less space, easy to use for all age people and needs least maintenance, this makes it easy to rank as one of the most common fitness equipment in commercial as well as household gyms.

How can an exercise bike reap more fitness benefits than the obvious?

In order to have a complete body workout, you need to engage in both- aerobic (cardio) and anaerobic (strength) exercises.

The exercise bike is an infamous equipment for cardio and lower body strength though it could also be used to perform aerobic and anaerobic exercises, both very efficiently.

But first, Get flexible-

Stretching has twofold benefits, first, it combats muscle tightening and enables you to ride in a better position.

Three exercises to flex your muscles-

• Stand with your feet apart (hip-width), one hand on the bike handle bar, one on the saddle and bend 90 degrees at the hips.
• Place outside of your ankle on the opposite knee and squat down, use support to balance.
• Forward lunges ensuring your knee doesn’t bend beyond your toe.

Cardio workout using exercise/spin bike-

For cardio, exercise bike is a perfect equipment. It affects your heart rate and influences blood flow in the body. With an exercise bike, you can easily control the intensity and speed of your workout to achieve the target heart rate. As it’s stationery, there is no risk whatsoever.

Interval training is a breakneck way to bring fire to your cardio session. Most professional cyclists train using interval training. With interval training, you have a pre-planned or programmed routine using which you can determine the amount of times and intervals for the exercise bike to kick into a harder gear and back down again and also set such sets for continuous HIT.

Interval training on exercise bike is an ideal way to target heart rate, recover and target heart rate again. It will work your heart muscles and improve blood flow throughout the body.

Strength workout while using exercise/spin bike-

Pedaling the exercise bike gets your legs to workout, tones your calves, quadriceps, and buttocks. Exercise bike is a great way to strengthen your muscles, you can take it a level up by adding upper body workout to your cardio routine.

• Do some upper body stretches as you start with the exercise bike. Hit higher intensity after warmup or instead of hitting the intensity you can steady the speed and perform sets of curls or a press.
• You can carry dumbbells in either of the hands or use a resistance band for various exercises while pedaling the bike or mid the interval training.
• While target heart rate intervals, exercise your arms, chest and back with weights or resistance band. You could also do it when you are pedaling slow and breathing slower.

You can perform a complete fitness routine, alternating upper body workout with target heart rate training all while exercising your lower body. This will also help you sync up your upper body with lower body.

Try to make the most of your exercise bike with a combination of exercises instead of exerting on cardio continuously. But you can check our complete cardio routine if you are looking for weight loss options based on cardio exercises only.

Let us know how it works out for you in the comments below, we’re all ears!