Indoor cycling classes are excellent ways to get a good workout indoors. A typical class consists of an instructor-led workout, ensuring good benefits from the exercise. It’s also possible to achieve your workout goals outside of a class, though it will require planning and commitment. A structured workout routine like interval training is a great way to make sure you’re meeting your fitness standards.
Basics
Intensity training is a way to boost cardiovascular response, calorie consumption and the overall benefits of an exercise. The method of increasing intensity can vary, but generally involves intervals, or periods of hard work followed by short times of rest. By giving your body some time to recover between bursts, you can regain just enough energy to push yourself to your limits during the work intervals. This helps solve the problem of the downward spiral during a single-intensity workout, in which you'll be working at a lower intensity at the middle and end of a workout than when you started.
Benefits
There are enormous benefits to increasing workout intensity for long or short periods of time. Your top-end aerobic capacity is challenged throughout the workout, instead of just at the beginning, giving you greater overall benefit. You also burn more calories and shorten your workout time to achieve the same weight-busting results; or keep your normal workout length and burn more calories. Remember, too, that your body gets into fitness slumps, during which it becomes very adept at a certain exercise. Intervals require your body to adapt to a varying environment, increasing fitness benefit and teaching your body to recover during active exercise.
Types
There are many types of intensity workouts. The simplest and easiest are called steady-state intervals, which require moderate to hard exertions followed by short periods of rest. A tempo workout is also simple, though not necessarily easy--it requires riding at a constant pace for a set time, usually just below lactate threshold for 20 to 60 minutes. Over-unders are great for increasing cardiac fitness with micro-bursts and rests, while power intervals use short, all-out efforts and longer rests to build your top end muscular and aerobic endurance.
Sample Workout
The principle behind interval training is to work hard, then rest just long enough to work hard again. This allows you to work harder and longer than if you simply sprinted through a workout. Steady-state intervals are an example of this type of exercise and are a great way to try out interval training. Start with a solid warm-up, maybe 10 minutes of easy pedaling. Then push yourself for 7 minutes—not too hard, but enough to bring your heart rate up to 80 percent maximum, or an intensity of 7 to 8 on a 1-to-10 scale of effort. After the interval, rest for 2 minutes with easy cycling, allowing your heart rate to come down to 60 or 70 percent. Then repeat the interval. Try doing just two intervals to start, working up to three or more per workout. Make sure and cool down with easy cycling.
Considerations
Interval training is among the most intense workouts you’ll come across. Be sure you have some cardiovascular fitness base before trying these workouts, and ease into the intensity after you start. Also, check with your doctor if you have any questions about the safety of these workouts, or if you have conditions that may impact your ability to perform them. A heart rate monitor is a good idea to keep track of how hard you’re working. Stop intensity training if you ever feel dizzy, light-headed or nauseous during or after a workout.
Intervals also require adequate rest to ensure maximum benefit and prevent injury. Allow a day of rest or very light cycling after every interval day, and vary the types of intervals you choose to do during the week. For power intervals, or after you work up to harder levels of the others, allow at least two days of rest or cycling between workouts. Do not train with intervals of any type on consecutive days unless you're under the guidance of a professional trainer.
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