An necessary a part of your health is conditioning. There are two varieties of conditioning: anaerobic and cardio. 

Anaerobic conditioning refers to your physique’s potential to make use of glycogen or creatine phosphate to create ATP. The extra anaerobic conditioning you will have, the extra environment friendly your physique is at creating ATP from glycogen or creatine phosphate. 

You situation or prepare your anaerobic system by performing quick bursts of intense exercise. 

Cardio conditioning refers to your physique’s potential to make use of oxidation to create ATP. The higher your cardio conditioning, the extra effectively your physique creates ATP from fats. 

You situation your cardio system by partaking in lengthy intervals of sluggish exercise. 

There’s a bit of gymnasium gear that’s efficient for doing each varieties of conditioning: the assault bike. 

What Is an Assault Bike?

An assault bike, also called a fan or air bike, is a full-body cardio machine that mixes the leg-exercising actions of biking with an upper-body exercise; as you’re employed the bike’s pedals, you concurrently pull and push its arms. 

In contrast to conventional stationary bikes the place you manually alter the bike’s resistance up or down, an assault bike makes use of a fan to supply resistance. The resistance routinely adapts to your output; the extra output you generate, the extra resistance you encounter. That is what could make the assault bike so brutal: the tougher you go, the tougher it will get. 

A number of firms make assault or air bikes. 

Whereas all air bikes are sometimes known as “assault bikes,” “Assault” is technically the model title for a particular producer of air bikes.

We personal an AssaultBike Traditional. It’s chain-driven, sturdy, and cozy.

We owned a Schwinn Airdyne prior to now. It was okay, however the journey wasn’t as clean and ergonomically comfy because the AssaultBike’s. Rogue is one other in style producer of air bikes.

One factor to think about when buying an air bike is whether or not it’s chain- or belt-driven. In comparison with chain-driven bikes, belt-driven fashions are costlier, a bit quieter, and require much less upkeep. Although all air bikes are fairly low upkeep. To not point out, they don’t require electrical energy and entry to retailers!

The Assault Bike vs. the Elliptical Machine

Assault bikes and elliptical machines provide the identical type of pedal + pull/push full-body motion, and if you happen to’re deciding whether or not to purchase one or the opposite, I might select an elliptical. There’s one thing that simply feels higher, to me no less than, about standing up whereas exercising, versus the hunched, squatty feeling you get on a motorbike. However when you’ve got entry to each at a business gymnasium, or the flexibility to get each to your dwelling gymnasium, it’s good to have the ability to combine up your exercise by shifting between them. Assault bikes are higher for top depth train (it’s onerous to get your coronary heart fee as excessive on an elliptical), whereas ellipticals are extra comfy for longer, less-intense exercises.

The Advantages of Assault Bike Exercises

Working an assault bike is difficult; it’s with good cause that they’re generally known as “distress machines.” Customers usually have a love-hate relationship with the assault bike, with the love half coming right down to the health–bettering advantages it affords:

Full-body exercise: Assault bike exercises interact a number of muscle teams concurrently, together with your arms, legs, core, and again. This provides you an entire lot of health bang to your buck. 

Low-impact: As a result of the assault bike is a biking train, it’s low-impact in comparison with jogging or sprinting. Regardless of being low-impact, the resistance you get on an air bike will go away your metabolic system scorched.

Can be utilized for anaerobic and cardio coaching: The assault bike is flexible. You may go sluggish and regular on it to get in some good Zone 2 cardio coaching or go quick and quick to hit your anaerobic system. 

Assault Bike Exercises

HIIT Assault Bike Exercise

Assault bikes are excellent for high-intensity interval coaching (HIIT). HIIT entails quick bursts of intense train adopted by relaxation or lower-intensity exercise intervals. This sort of exercise may help you burn energy, enhance your metabolism, and enhance your cardiovascular health. It’s the final word anaerobic exercise.

I love to do HIIT on the assault bike two occasions every week. I do it after my decrease physique exercise days.

Right here’s how I do it:

• 20-second interval, pedaling as onerous as doable. I normally think about I’m pedaling away from a grizzly bear.
• Relaxation for 1 minute and 40 seconds.
• Repeat for 2-4 extra intervals.

That’s it! A HIIT session on an assault bike solely takes about 5 minutes and offers you the suitable dose and quantity for anaerobic conditioning.

As your anaerobic conditioning improves, you’ll want to extend the stress of your HIIT exercises to proceed to elicit an adaptive response. You may add stress to your assault bike HIIT exercises in two methods:

Add rounds. If you happen to accomplished three rounds on day one, attempt to do 4 subsequent time. Then, add one spherical per week. Shoot for 8-12 rounds earlier than altering the opposite variable (decreasing relaxation). When you accomplish that, drop again to 4-6 rounds and repeat the method.

Lower your relaxation time. Begin with a 1:5 work-to-rest ratio. Twenty seconds of intense work adopted by 1 minute and 40 seconds of relaxation offers you that 1:5 ratio. The next week, strive going to a 1:4 work-to-rest ratio. That will be 20 seconds of labor, adopted by 1 minute and 20 seconds of relaxation. You realize your relaxation is suitable once you really feel a downshift in your effort — a sudden lower in energy output — in the course of your second to final interval. If you happen to don’t really feel that downshift, you’re both not working onerous sufficient throughout your work intervals or taking too lengthy of a relaxation interval.

Pyramid Assault Bike Exercise

The pyramid exercise is a difficult and efficient solution to push your limits on the assault bike. This exercise step by step will increase the length of every interval after which decreases it in a pyramid-like construction. The pyramid exercise helps enhance your endurance and stamina:

• Begin with a 30-second dash, adopted by a 30-second relaxation. 
• Improve the dash length by 10 seconds and reduce the remaining by 10 seconds with every subsequent spherical till you attain a most dash length of 60 seconds. 
• Then, reverse the method, reducing the dash length by 10 seconds and growing the remaining length by 10 seconds with every spherical till you come back to a 30-second dash.

Zone 2 Assault Bike Coaching

Zone 2 cardio is the optimum solution to prepare your cardio system. 

My most popular methodology of Zone 2 coaching is strolling on an incline treadmill or doing the elliptical machine, however often I’ll get on the assault bike for my Zone 2. Due to the full-body nature of the assault bike and the added resistance you get as you pedal quicker, I can get to my Zone 2 coronary heart fee fairly quick and keep there constantly for a very long time.

I’ll even hop on the assault bike and pedal for 10 minutes all through the day once I take a break from working and being sedentary. I can get my coronary heart fee up into the Zone 2 stage fairly rapidly. It makes for a pleasant motion snack.

The one draw back of doing all of your Zone 2 cardio on an assault bike is the loud fan. You’ll have to put on earbuds to look at Cobra Kai in your smartphone when you pedal.