What Do Exercise Bikes Do?

If you like to bicycle, but don’t want the hassle of bad weather and traffic, then an indoor exercise bike may be a good choice. Easy to use and relatively compact, they can fit in almost any area of your home. Gyms and health clubs also tend to have several different exercise bikes available, since these bicycles can promote fitness and weight loss.

Identification

Exercise bicycles are available in either an upright, traditional configuration or in a recumbent layout, where you sit on the seat while leaning against a back support, with your legs stretched out in front of you. A subset of the upright model is the indoor cycling bike, developed in 1987 as a way to simulate the intensity of cross-country cycling. You can also add a trainer to any regular bike, which allows it to be used in a stationary position.

Features

Different exercise bikes have special features that allow it to do many more things than just straight pedaling. Some have displays that show your heart rate, the calories you’re burning, your speed and revolutions per minute, various resistance levels and time and equivalent distance you’ve traveled. Others have programs where you can choose a routine based on your fitness level or desired maximum heart rate. A few even have book rests, television monitors or video games.

Cardiovascular Benefits

Exercise bikes can provide an effective aerobic workout. When researchers in New Delhi, India, looked at the health benefit of cycling, they found that even short durations have cardiovascular benefits. Their results, published in 2004 in the “Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology,” showed improvements in heart rate and blood pressure response after only 15 days, which were measurable within minutes of beginning cycling and continuing for a period of time following each routine.

Strength Benefits

An exercise bike is less stressful on your knees, ankles and feet than walking or running on a treadmill due to the lower impact on your joints. At the same time, bikes that allow you to increase the resistance level make you work your muscles harder, strengthening the gluteal muscles in your hips and thighs and hamstring muscles in your legs. Christina A. Geithner, professor of exercise science at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, adds that an upright exercise bike works your gluteals better than a recumbent because you can fully extend your hips.

Weight Loss Benefits

A 16-year followup study of 18,414 women in the Nurses' Health Study II took a look at how effective bicycle riding was compared to walking when it came to avoiding weight gain. The results, published in June 2010 in the “Archives of Internal Medicine,” showed women that bicycled as little as five minutes a day gained less weight than women that didn’t bicycle at all. Women that used a bike for more than four hours a week had much less risk of gaining more than 5 percent of their body weight than nonbikers.