A crucial a part of your fitness is conditioning. There are two varieties of conditioning: anaerobic and aerobic. 

Anaerobic conditioning refers to your body’s ability to make use of glycogen or creatine phosphate to create ATP. The more anaerobic conditioning you could have, the more efficient your body is at creating ATP from glycogen or creatine phosphate. 

You condition or train your anaerobic system by performing short bursts of intense activity. 

Aerobic conditioning refers to your body’s ability to make use of oxidation to create ATP. The higher your aerobic conditioning, the more efficiently your body creates ATP from fat. 

You condition your aerobic system by engaging in long periods of slow activity. 

There’s a chunk of gym equipment that’s effective for doing each varieties of conditioning: the assault bike. 

What Is an Assault Bike?

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

Unlike traditional stationary bikes where you manually adjust the bike’s resistance up or down, an assault bike uses a fan to supply resistance. The resistance mechanically adapts to your output; the more output you generate, the more resistance you encounter. That is what could make the assault bike so brutal: the harder you go, the harder it gets. 

Several corporations make assault or air bikes. 

While all air bikes are sometimes called “assault bikes,” “Assault” is technically the brand name for a selected manufacturer of air bikes.

We own an AssaultBike Classic. It’s chain-driven, sturdy, and comfy.

We owned a Schwinn Airdyne previously. It was okay, however the ride wasn’t as smooth and ergonomically comfortable because the AssaultBike’s. Rogue is one other popular manufacturer of air bikes.

One thing to contemplate when purchasing an air bike is whether or not it’s chain- or belt-driven. In comparison with chain-driven bikes, belt-driven models are costlier, somewhat quieter, and require less maintenance. Though all air bikes are pretty low maintenance. Not to say, they don’t require electricity and access to outlets!

The Assault Bike vs. the Elliptical Machine

Assault bikes and elliptical machines offer the identical sort of pedal + pull/push full-body motion, and when you’re deciding whether to purchase one or the opposite, I’d select an elliptical. There’s something that just feels higher, to me not less than, about standing up while exercising, versus the hunched, squatty feeling you get on a motorcycle. But when you could have access to each at a business gym, or the flexibility to get each for your private home gym, it’s nice to find a way to combine up your workout by moving between them. Assault bikes are higher for top intensity exercise (it’s hard to get your heart rate as high on an elliptical), while ellipticals are more comfortable for longer, less-intense workouts.

The Advantages of Assault Bike Workouts

Working an assault bike is difficult; it’s with good reason that they’re sometimes known as “misery machines.” Users often have a love-hate relationship with the assault bike, with the love part coming all the way down to the fitness–improving advantages it offers:

Full-body workout: Assault bike workouts engage multiple muscle groups concurrently, including your arms, legs, core, and back. This provides you an entire lot of fitness bang to your buck. 

Low-impact: Since the assault bike is a cycling exercise, it’s low-impact in comparison with jogging or sprinting. Despite being low-impact, the resistance you get on an air bike will leave your metabolic system scorched.

Might be used for anaerobic and aerobic training: The assault bike is flexible. You possibly can go slow and regular on it to get in some nice Zone 2 aerobic training or go fast and short to hit your anaerobic system. 

Assault Bike Workouts

HIIT Assault Bike Workout

Assault bikes are perfect for high-intensity interval training (HIIT). HIIT involves short bursts of intense exercise followed by rest or lower-intensity activity periods. One of these workout can assist you burn calories, boost your metabolism, and improve your cardiovascular fitness. It’s the final word anaerobic workout.

I wish to do HIIT on the assault bike two times every week. I do it after my lower body workout days.

Here’s how I do it:

• 20-second interval, pedaling as hard as possible. I normally imagine I’m pedaling away from a grizzly bear.
• Rest for 1 minute and 40 seconds.
• Repeat for 2-4 more intervals.

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

As your anaerobic conditioning improves, you’ll need to extend the stress of your HIIT workouts to proceed to elicit an adaptive response. You possibly can add stress to your assault bike HIIT workouts in two ways:

Add rounds. If you happen to accomplished three rounds on day one, attempt to do 4 next time. Then, add one round per week. Shoot for 8-12 rounds before changing the opposite variable (reducing rest). When you achieve this, drop back to 4-6 rounds and repeat the method.

Decrease your rest time. Start with a 1:5 work-to-rest ratio. Twenty seconds of intense work followed by 1 minute and 40 seconds of rest will provide you with that 1:5 ratio. The next week, try going to a 1:4 work-to-rest ratio. That may be 20 seconds of labor, followed by 1 minute and 20 seconds of rest. your rest is suitable once you feel a downshift in your effort — a sudden decrease in power output — in the course of your second to last interval. If you happen to don’t feel that downshift, you’re either not working hard enough during your work intervals or taking too long of a rest interval.

Pyramid Assault Bike Workout

The pyramid workout is a difficult and effective approach to push your limits on the assault bike. This workout regularly increases the duration of every interval after which decreases it in a pyramid-like structure. The pyramid workout helps improve your endurance and stamina:

• Start with a 30-second sprint, followed by a 30-second rest. 
• Increase the sprint duration by 10 seconds and reduce the remaining by 10 seconds with each subsequent round until you reach a maximum sprint duration of 60 seconds. 
• Then, reverse the method, decreasing the sprint duration by 10 seconds and increasing the remaining duration by 10 seconds with each round until you come to a 30-second sprint.

Zone 2 Assault Bike Training

Zone 2 cardio is the optimal approach to train your aerobic system. 

My preferred approach to Zone 2 training is walking on an incline treadmill or doing the elliptical machine, but occasionally 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 faster, I can get to my Zone 2 heart rate pretty fast and stay there consistently for a very long time.

I’ll even hop on the assault bike and pedal for 10 minutes throughout the day after I take a break from working and being sedentary. I can get my heart rate up into the Zone 2 level pretty quickly. It makes for a pleasant movement snack.

The one downside of doing all your Zone 2 cardio on an assault bike is the loud fan. You’ll must wear earbuds to observe Cobra Kai in your smartphone when you pedal.