If your goal is to lose weight and lose weight fast, then there’s nothing better than a stationary bike to give you the variety of exercises you need to burn the fat.
Why use the exercise bike to lose weight?
There are two main reasons. The beauty of exercising on the stationary bike is that you can control the intensity of the exercise and monitor your heart rate to optimize fat burning. When you train outside, there are many distractions such as traffic lights, cars and people that distract your mind or prevent you from training at a certain level of intensity to maximize fat burning. The second reason is that if the weather is bad outside, it’s usually a good reason not to exercise. You don’t need excuses not to train. I have learned that one of the most important components of a weight loss exercise program is consistency.
What are the best exercise bike workouts?
Here it is where it gets interesting. The old school believes that low intensity cardio is best. For many years, people thought that if your heart rate is between 60-70% of your maximum heart rate, you will maximize fat burning and lose weight faster.
A number of studies have now found that interval training will not only speed up weight loss, but you don’t need to train for as long. Interval training consists of periods of high-intensity exercise, followed by periods of low-intensity recovery. The percentage of fat burned during exercise falls (compared to other fuel sources), but the total amount of fat burned increases. Fat is also burned after interval training stops, as the body recovers from the intense exertion. That’s the key to interval training.
Examples of stationary bike interval workouts.
A recent study from the University of NSW has shown that interval training is more effective than low-intensity cardio. This is the training they used in their study (the results will impress you):
Heat for 5 to 10 minutes;
Sprint for 8 seconds;
Recover for 12 seconds;
Repeat the previous two steps for 20 minutes;
Heat for 5 minutes.
That is. Depending on your physical condition, you may want to cut your interval time down a bit and gradually build up to 20 minutes. Uni’s study of 45 women showed they burned fat 6 times faster than the second group of women who did 40 minutes of low-intensity cardio. So you can train half the time and lose 6 times the fat!
