Indoor cycling workouts don't offer much in the way of scenery, but they do give you the opportunity to exercise during inclement weather or when you need to focus on your training program rather than onrushing traffic or potholes in the roadway. Cycling workouts can give you both aerobic and anaerobic benefits in a single session, or you can alternate a longer, slower-paced aerobic workout on one day with a more intense session of interval training for anaerobic conditioning the next.
Aerobic vs. Anaerobic
Aerobic exercise is designed to strengthen your cardiovascular system, lower blood pressure, tone your body and increase endurance. Aerobic exercise is performed at moderate intensity, ideally for at least 30 minutes on most days of the week. Examples include brisk walking, swimming or cycling at a steady pace. Anaerobic exercise consists of bursts of high-intensity effort over a short period of time. This type of exercise builds muscle. Examples include sprinting, weightlifting and cycling with all-out bursts of speed.
Building Strength
Training 4 Cyclists offers anaerobic workouts online. Always warm up before launching into a cycling workout -- in this case, for 15 minutes with increasing intensity. Then ride at maximum intensity for 60 seconds, followed by a six-minute recovery of slow riding. Do this five times, for a total of five minutes of all-out cycling plus a total of 30 minutes of slow-riding recovery. This is a 50-minute workout that builds anaerobic strength and provides aerobic benefits.
Aerobic Capacity
An anaerobic workout that gets progressively more difficult. After the warm-up, you begin with 40 seconds of maximum-intensity cycling at a gear suitable for a flat road. Then ride easy for the next 20 seconds. Do this five times. Take a break for one minute. Then do five of the same sets with increased resistance at flat-road gear +1. After a two-minute recovery period, do five more sets at flat-road gear +2.
Considerations
Indoor cycling classes, offered at many gyms, are an effective way to combine an anaerobic and aerobic workout. Women's Total Fitness advises to take classes up to three times per week. You can burn 800 to 1,000 calories in a class, which makes it efficient for weight loss. In addition, indoor cycling is a low-impact exercise that is relatively gentle on your knees, as long as you don't overdue revving up the resistance level of the gears. Always check with your doctor before starting a new anaerobic -- or aerobic -- workout routine. Start slowly and work you way up gradually to longer bursts of maximum-intensity interval training.
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