Three great ways of using the exercise bike for shedding fat and getting fit
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I personally recommend three types of training that I have had nice results with in terms of fat burning and increased stamina: Long ride pulse training, interval training/spinning and high intensity interval training (HIIT).
Long ride pulse training (continuous training): You basically aim for a pulse level that you can maintain for a long period of time. Most newer exercise bikes offer the capability to measure your pulse and some even adjust the resistance according to your needs. Say you want a pulse of 100 and the bike adjust the resistance to keep your pulse at that level. A cheaper solution to this would be to manually adjust the resistance and measure pulse by wearing a pulse watch or make sure that the exercise bike you get has the inexpensive addition of a pulse measurement.
To find your target heart rate you can use these formulas:
MAX HR=220-AGE [beats per minute]
TARGET HR=MAX HR x INTENSITY FACTOR (IF)
BEGINNER: IF=0.5-0.6, AVERAGE: IF=0.6-0.7, HIGH FITNESS: IF=0.75-0.85
So if you are say 40 years old with a average fitness level you get:
MAX HR=220-40=180, TARGET HR=180 x 0.6=108 bpm
Interval training: Interval training usually lasts from half an hour to an hour. Interval training is when you switch back and forth from high level to low level intensity. You basically aim for adjusting your reistance according to some preset program. More advanced exercise bikes offer in built programs that can be used where resistance is adjusted continiously. A different and cheaper solution would be to aim for a higher speed or higher resistanse in predefined periods. You could even aim to have a max pulse of something for periods of time and then return to maintainance level.
High Intensity Interval training (HIIT): HIIT is the modern version of interval training. Some remarkable research from Japan lead to what is known as the Tabata protocol / Tabata intevals. The researched shown that bouts of 20 seconds of very high intensity work followed by 10 seconds of low intensity lead to superiour results in terms of fat burning and stamina. The results have been proven later by other researchers as a very good way of gaining fast results. Other intervals has also become popular in the fitness comunity, usually in the same ratio as the Tabata protocol (15, 7.5/10, 5 etc).
The standard Tabata protocol is the one I have mostly used and is implemented like this:
4 minutes of warm up
4 minutes of 20 seconds of high intensity followed with 10 seconds of low intensity
4 minutes of cool down
You should feel like you can’t handle one more interval after finishing the last one. Not for the faint hearted!
If you have reached a certain level of fitness you should include interval training (HIIT or ordinary) as part of your program to progress. It has been shown that after doing medium to low level intensity for a while your body needs some extra stimuli to get higher VO2 oxygen uptake and better stamina. Interval training, and especially HIIT, is quite challenging so you need a good warm up before starting. Aim to increase the time for regular interval training or the sets for HIIT. Don’t overdo interval training as it is quite taxing on your body.
Allways remember to finish your exercise with a shake containing a mix of proteins and carbohydrates. I recommend using a protein powder and mixing with table or grape sugar.
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