An exercise bike provides you with an opportunity to burn calories, improve your cardiovascular stamina and build lower-leg muscles. The duration, intensity and technique you use affect what type of benefits you'll receive. Whatever your level of fitness, you can use an exercise bike to help you meet your fitness goals.
Beginner Program
If you're just starting out exercising, focus on building cardiovascular stamina, which is your ability to exercise over a period of time. You'll increase the intensity of your workouts after you build aerobic capacity, so you can exercise longer. Begin by maintaining an even pedaling pace during your workout, rather than trying to pedal as fast as you can and taking breaks to recover. Use the same resistance setting, one that lets you maintain a pace that doesn't exhaust you after a few minutes. Work at a pace that has you sweating and taking deep breaths but allows you to talk during your ride. If you can't talk, you have gone out of the aerobic zone, according to the American Heart Association. If you have to take a break, don't stop completely. Keep your muscles moving slowly by pedaling backward or slowly forward while you recover. Keep track of the number of minutes you work each day so that you can track improvement.
Intermediate Program
When you have built an aerobic fitness base that lets you work for 20 minutes or longer, it's time to begin varying your workout to get more benefit. Experiment with the resistance settings on your bike. Less resistance lets you pedal faster, bringing your heart rate up with intensity. More resistance makes it harder to pedal, bringing your heart rate up with more muscular effort, which also helps you build muscle. Try standing on the pedals while you ride to emphasize different muscles by requiring your legs to push your entire body weight. You can add peaks and valleys to your workout by raising the intensity of your workouts with 30- or 60-second bursts of higher-intensity pedaling every five minutes or so.
Advanced Program
When you are able to work at a consistent pace for 30 minutes each session and you are familiar with the resistance settings, standing while pedaling and sprinting, and how these all affect you, create an all-encompassing workout. Start by warming up with four to five minutes of pedaling. When you get into your aerobic zone, break your workout into repeated blocs of higher-resistance pedaling with long, powerful strokes; lower-resistance pedaling with short, quick strokes; standing; and 60- to 90-second sprints, either at a medium resistance setting, every five minutes.
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