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The stationary bike is a popular cardio machine that helps you attain your fitness goals. One of the best features about it is that it is easy to use. It requires very little know-how to start, as well as minimal supervision.
Are you a beginner?
Perhaps you’re just a person who wants a cardio machine that you could use without any help in your home’s comfort?
Regardless of who you are, the stationary bike can provide you with everything necessary to help you effortlessly perform different workouts and hit your fitness goals.
Just 10 minutes per day on your bike can remarkably boost your energy levels and improve your moods, not to mention the cardiovascular benefits you’ll get out of it.
This article focuses on helping you become fit with an effective stationary bike workout plan (for beginners).
So, let’s get straight to the workout program!
BEFORE YOU START WORKING OUT…
Contents
First, it’s worth acknowledging that no single workout program suits everyone. The best stationary bike workout relies on an individual’s fitness level, age, and general health.
Anyone who wants to try a new workout routine should first speak with a healthcare professional. You can also modify these workout suggestions based on your unique needs and preferences.
But first, you need to ensure you understand what it entails to do the workout plan right.
DOING THE PROGRAM RIGHT FOR BEST RESULTS
Just by sitting on a stationary bike, you’ve already taken the most important step towards improving your overall life.
But there are several things you need to bear in mind before starting any exercise program, regardless of whether it’s simply riding a stationary exercise bike.
Keep reading.
1. Warm-Up Exercises Are Fundamental
If your Stationary Bike Workout consists of a computerized warm-up program, you could utilize this to get started with the exercise slowly. A good warm-up assists you to prevent cramps and other muscle complications. Also, ensure that you have enough water available to sip on as you exercise.
2. Avoid Ending Early
Carry out the exercise routine throughout the entire time allotted. Avoid undercutting the program by ending it early. By completing it to the full duration, you’ll get the most out of it. That said, it shouldn’t make you feel pain or even cause an injury. Moderation is the key!
3. Cooling Down Helps
Quite frankly, cooling down is equally as crucial as warming up. A cool-down primarily helps the blood flow to gradually ease in your body and returns to the same, original state. Generally, this plays a huge role in reaching your aims.
Beginner Workouts
Typically, the stationary bike is the ideal cardio machine for people who have injuries or those who are struggling with arthritic joints. And this is primarily because of the cyclical movement, which puts minimal pressure on the user’s critical joints. Equally, it’s also an excellent option for beginners, who haven’t become accustomed to high-impact exercises.
As a budding new fitness fanatic, you shouldn’t prioritize high-impact, high-calorie burn exercises. Instead, pay more attention to relatively longer workouts to help boost your endurance such that you may perform high-intensity workouts efficiently in the long term.
You must also remember that your priority is to stay safe throughout the process and not to try too many things at a go. Take each day at a time and note down the specific goals you might want to attain. You need to avoid overexerting yourself by managing the pain during the exercise. Although you need to feel the challenge, it shouldn’t get to the point where you are writhing in pain!
All the workouts mentioned below are tested and safe. However, don’t forget that everyone’s different. So always do what you think is the most comfortable for you concerning time intervals and methods.
Let’s get started.
Low-High Intensity Interval Training
This form of workout plan is perfect for any beginner since you allow your body to adapt to bursts of high-impact intervals. You then give it a downtime during the low-intensity intervals to help with recovery. The low-intensity intervals also give you something you can look forward to during those strenuous portions.
Although you might think that this won’t be highly effective at burning calories, research actually proves that it shifts more calories than simply pedaling at a constant speed.
The drastic changes and adaptations that the body undergoes from high to low-intensity intervals usually challenge your body to avoid getting used to the consistency. As a result, your body uses up more energy and burns more calories.
How to do this:
- Start: Beginning with a low impact, warm-up for 5 minutes will ignite your muscles for the next exercise. Pedal until you feel warmed up while maintaining a moderate pace.
- Workout: Once you complete the warm-up, jump straight into a sprint for 30 seconds, as you pedal with all your effort. Then, rest for 10 seconds before performing the 30-second sprint again. Do this pattern around 10 times, which gives you a solid 15-minute workout on your stationary bike.
- Rest: After you’ve completed these rounds, pedal for 5 minutes at a slow pace for your heart rate to drop down to rest.
Once you’ve performed this workout for a week to a fortnight, make it your goal to progress by adding an extra 5 minutes to the exercise. Next, try this out for around a week and observe how you feel.
If you’re up to the challenge, you could even change it up by carrying out 40-second sprints and alternating with 10-second rest intervals. Alternatively, you can continue with the initial interval pattern but consider extending the overall time to 30 minutes.
Doing a 30-minute exercise is golden because that’s reaching the recommended amount of workouts per day. And when you get to this point, you may progress to more challenging high-intensity exercises.
Beginners Calorie Burner
If you’re that beginner who wants to be pushed to his or her limits, then this calorie burner workout will do just that!
And the best reward is that you can burn about 15 calories in only one minute – that is 150 calories in 10 minutes! It will challenge your body and greatly improve your endurance in the long haul.
How to do this:
- Start: Pedal for about 5 minutes while maintaining a moderate pace to warm up your muscles.
- Workout: Cycle for around 90 seconds as you put in your best effort, then get a 90-second break for recovery where you keep cycling at a level that’s about half of your best effort. Then, switch it up and cycle for 60 seconds as you put in your best effort, and then get a 30-second recovery break where you keep cycling at a level that’s around 70% of your total effort. Next, keep alternating between these two sets for approximately 30 minutes or more if possible!
- Rest: Cycle at a gentle pace for 5 minutes and let your heart rate come down slowly.
Strength Training Workout
As opposed to mainstream beliefs about muscle-building, you don’t need to lift weights to gain and tone muscles.
That’s right!
As a beginner, your stationary bike could be your avenue to help you train your body to be highly competitive and ultimately help you to hit goals such as strength building safely.
Stationary bikes typically consist of a dial or similar that allows you to adjust the “rate of perceived exertion” or RPE, it’s the intensity of your bike’s resistance.
A level 4 RPE must be a comfortable pace for any beginner and can be used in your warm-up. However, you should utilize levels 5-6 during your workout periods.
You can build your muscles by adding resistance or RPE on your bike, which can feel as if you’re cycling up a hill. At first, you’ll realize that as you add in the RPE, you tend to slow down. But this is because your leg muscles are releasing more energy that, as a result, makes your leg muscles, quads, and glutes tone up and become stronger.
In case you have some dumbbells at hand, you could always perform bicep curls while you’re pedaling. This will help to give your upper back and arms a good exercise at the same time.
It’s also worth noting that when adding in RPE, you protect your lower back by not exerting much pressure on it. You could do this by positioning yourself outside of the saddle, such that your quads and glutes take the bulk of that pressure instead of your lower back. Doing this every 5 minutes or so will encourage your body to utilize dormant muscles.
HEALTH BENEFITS OF REGULAR CYCLING
If you have a tight schedule, keeping yourself fit can be a demanding task. Thankfully, a stationary bike does exactly that with utmost ease!
And, apart from the ease of doing the workout from your home’s comfort, there are a few other advantages of using a stationary bike.
Below is a detailed list of some of the benefits to expect:
1. Ease & Comfort
As aforementioned, a stationary bike allows you to exercise from your comfort. You also don’t need to spend your time on a standard bike to get that much-needed exercise.
Additionally, when you own a stationary bike, you could pick the type of resistance and adjust the intensity accordingly. And all this is without a lot of hassle. You can’t do the same with a regular bike.
You can read a magazine or watch TV all while you’re working out. That means you’ll enjoy the feeling of freedom as you exercise on a stationary bike.
You might experience exercising more than you expected which is not a bad thing when you have a short period to cut down more pounds.
2. Full Body Workout
Another advantage of using a stationary bike is that it targets your entire body. You reap the most out of this including the cardio exercise advantage and its toning effects on the lower body.
A stationary bike will help you work your inner thighs, calves, and butt all in one movement. Besides working on the lower body, it also works on your lower abdominals.
A stationary bike is an excellent piece of home gym equipment for anyone who wants to get good exercise in less time and effort.
3. Low Impact
If you exercise on a stationary bike, you’ll burn calories by exerting less stress on your joints and knees. In other words, it focuses on offering a good cardio exercise with a lesser impact on the body.
By exercising on a stationary bike, you’re keeping the spine healthy, and strengthening your muscles, which further help in relieving back pain.
4. For Your Health
Get started with stationary bike exercises. They’re a simple, less effort type of workout for both young and old people.
You can easily increase your heart rate and get good cardiovascular exercise, which is recommended by health experts to do a few times per week.
So when you have the choice to perform this in your home gym, you’ll have no reason for not protecting your health.
Stationary bikes are designed for people of all ages, as well as all levels of physical fitness. That means it is the best place to start with any new fitness program, and an excellent addition to the existing one.
SUMMARY
Working out on a stationary bike offers striking benefits. It offers a mild low impact exercise, without putting much pressure on the back and spine and shows the expected results in a reasonable time.
Besides this, riding on this machine has other health benefits, particularly for people who are suffering from some sort of back issue. People struggling with osteoarthritis and spinal stenosis find this type of exercise highly effective and helpful. Stationary Bike Workout alleviates their pain and reinforces major muscles to improve back support.
What’s more, a stationary bike helps in cardiovascular training, burning fat, gaining muscle, and also aid in many different therapies. With such numerous benefits, you should undoubtedly incorporate this exercise bicycle into your fitness regime!
The above workouts will help you live longer!
References
1. https://www.topfitnessmag.com/stationary-bike-workout-for-beginners/
2. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/stationary-bike-workout#workout-plans
3. https://trendtofit.com/stationary-bike-workout-for-beginners/#Stationary_Bike_Workout_For_Beginners
4. https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/stationary-bike-workout
5. https://www.verywellfit.com/stationary-bike-workout-for-beginners-1230779
6. https://livehealthy.chron.com/exercise-bike-workouts-beginners-2870.html
7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6722762/
8. https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/pa-health/index.htm
9. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/cycling-health-benefits
10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847818306934
