An vital a part of your health is conditioning. There are two kinds 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’ve gotten, 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 durations of gradual exercise. 

There’s a bit of health club gear that’s efficient for doing each kinds 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. 

Not like conventional stationary bikes the place you manually modify the bike’s resistance up or down, an assault bike makes use of a fan to offer 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 more durable you go, the more durable it will get. 

A number of corporations make assault or air bikes. 

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

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

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

One factor to contemplate 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 dearer, a little 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 shops!

The Assault Bike vs. the Elliptical Machine

Assault bikes and elliptical machines supply the identical sort of pedal + pull/push full-body motion, and when you’re deciding whether or not to purchase one or the opposite, I’d 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 have entry to each at a industrial health club, or the power to get each on your dwelling health club, 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 arduous to get your coronary heart charge 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 purpose that they’re typically 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–enhancing advantages it presents:

Full-body exercise: Assault bike exercises interact a number of muscle teams concurrently, together with your arms, legs, core, and again. This offers you an entire lot of health bang on 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 depart your metabolic system scorched.

Can be utilized for anaerobic and cardio coaching: The assault bike is flexible. You may go gradual 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 includes quick bursts of intense train adopted by relaxation or lower-intensity exercise durations. Any such exercise can assist you burn energy, enhance your metabolism, and enhance your cardiovascular health. It’s the last 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 arduous 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. In case you 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 achieve this, 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 provides you with that 1:5 ratio. The next week, attempt going to a 1:4 work-to-rest ratio. That may be 20 seconds of labor, adopted by 1 minute and 20 seconds of relaxation. You already know your relaxation is acceptable if you really feel a downshift in your effort — a sudden lower in energy output — in the course of your second to final interval. In case you don’t really feel that downshift, you’re both not working arduous 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 option 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 remainder 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 remainder 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 option 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. Because of 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 charge fairly quick and keep there persistently for a very long time.

I’ll even hop on the assault bike and pedal for 10 minutes all through the day after I take a break from working and being sedentary. I can get my coronary heart charge 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 observe Cobra Kai in your smartphone whilst you pedal.