Best Stationary Bike Workout For Weight Loss

You’ve probably heard that the best way to lose weight is by cycling. But if you’re looking for an effective way to increase your heart rate and burn fat, you might want to consider a stationary bike workout.

Stationary bikes are a great way to exercise at home because they’re easy to use and inexpensive. They also have other benefits: You can keep your feet firmly planted on the ground, so there’s no risk of losing your balance or falling off the bike. They don’t require any special equipment or clothing (unless you choose something with resistance levels). And they’re quiet, so they won’t disturb anyone else who may be in the house.

The only drawback is that you’ll need to make sure your bike has reliable resistance levels so that it will provide your body with enough resistance during a workout session. If it doesn’t, then you won’t lose much weight!

Right here on Buy and Slay, you are privy to a litany of relevant information on stationary bike workout benefits, stationary bike workout for beginners, spin bike workout for weight loss, and so much more. Take out time to visit our catalog for more information on similar topics.

Best Stationary Bike Workout For Weight Loss

A stationary bike is a piece of exercise equipment that people can use for indoor cycling. This can be an accessible and low impact type of aerobic activity that can benefit a person’s health and fitness. Indoor cycling is a relatively easy exercise to start, and people can adapt workouts to suit their fitness requirements.

Stationary bikes are a popular device among health enthusiasts. Many people may have purchased one due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Evidence notes that digital technologies have improved the convenience of indoor cycling and spinning, helping increase the popularity of these sports.

As a physical activity that people can perform in their homes, indoor cycling is a fun and accessible exercise that can provide many health and fitness benefits. It may also be a suitable alternative to other types of exercise.

In this article, we will discuss the possible health benefits of stationary bikes, as well as the different types of such bikes. We will also provide examples of workout plans.

Health benefits of stationary bikes

Performing regular exercise such as cycling is an important activity that a person can use to improve their well-being.

Some guidelines recommend that people attempt to perform 150–300 minutes of moderate aerobic activities or 75–150 minutes of vigorous aerobic activities per week.

A 2019 systematic review highlights that indoor cycling can be an effective method for improving health and fitness. Other research indicates that regular indoor cycling can benefit health, particularly for people with obesity.

This is consistent with other studies noting that indoor cycling may be more beneficial for body composition and physical fitness than regular cycling.

Other research adds that indoor cycling is a time-efficient form of exercise. People can also vary the structure and alternate intensity to make it a more enjoyable activity.

Additional benefits that stationary bikes may offer include:

• relatively low intensity
• safety and convenience of a home workout
• muscle strengthening
• improvement of cardiovascular fitness

Workout plans

No single workout plan suits everyone. The right stationary bike workout depends on a person’s age, fitness level, and overall health.

Anyone considering a new workout routine may want to first consult with a healthcare professional. People can modify the following workout suggestions according to their unique needs and preferences.

Beginner workouts

For someone new to cycling, the first step is to set up the bike properly. It is advisable to follow the manufacturer’s setup instructions. These may include adjusting the handlebar or the seat height.

After adjusting the bike, a person may want to consider a beginner-friendly workout routine, such as the following one:

1. Warm up at a low resistance level for about 5 minutes.
2. Increase the resistance to a level that is slightly challenging but that still allows for conversation. Cycle at a brisk pace for 1 minute. Return to a comfortable pace for 3 minutes. Repeat this sequence 3–5 times.
3. Return to a low resistance level for a 5–10-minute cooldown.

People just beginning to use a stationary bike should remember that there is no need to rush. A 15–20-minute workout is an accomplishment.

Improving fitness takes time and consistent effort. Starting small and staying driven is a winning strategy.

Weight loss

Stationary bikes are a great fat-burning tool. An interval workout focused on sprinting can help burn calories.

Below is an example of a 20-minute routine:

1. Begin with a 5-minute warmup at a brisk pace.
2. Increase the resistance to a level where sprinting is comfortable. Sprint at a hard pace for 30 seconds, at a medium pace for 30 seconds, and at an easy pace for 60 seconds. Repeat this interval cycle 3 times.
3. With the same resistance, sprint as fast as possible for 40 seconds, then at an easy pace for 20 seconds. Repeat this 4 times.
4. Finish up with a 5-minute cooldown at a lowered resistance.

Sprinting is an excellent way to burn calories fast. Moreover, a person may choose to fit this quick fat-burning routine into a lunch break for a midday energy boost.

HIIT workouts

High intensity interval training (HIIT) has grown in popularity over the past several years. HIIT workouts center on high bursts of energy over a short period of time.

Research suggests that HIIT workouts can improve blood pressure and metabolism.

A HIIT stationary bike workout may involve the following:

1. Warm up for 5 minutes at a low resistance level and medium pace.
2. Pedal at a light resistance level but high intensity for 30 seconds. Follow this with 30 seconds of easy pedaling. Repeat this pattern 5 times.
3. Cycle at a medium intensity for 5 minutes.
4. Pedal at a high resistance level and low cadence for 30 seconds. Follow this with 30 seconds of easy pedaling. Repeat this pattern 5 times.
5. Finish up with a 5-minute cooldown.

With HIIT workouts, it is crucial to keep the heart rate up for short bursts of high intensity.

People can adapt this type of workout to suit their fitness levels. Regardless of fitness level and goals, a good workout should be enjoyable and sustainable.

It is equally important to pay attention to the body’s signals and take a break if necessary.

Types of bikes

The type of stationary bike that most people are likely familiar with is the upright bike. The design of this bike is similar to a regular bicycle, with pedals positioned under the body. Many people may recognize this type of bike at the gym.

Another type of bike popular at the gym is an indoor, or spinning, bike. This is the type individuals commonly use for spin classes. They include many adjustable features that allow people to quickly alter the bike to follow the spin routine.

A recumbent bike is another type. It has a larger seat, allowing the rider to cycle in a reclining position. Many people enjoy the recumbent bike, because it puts less strain on the lower back. This bike is a great option for people with back problems and for those who are new to cycling.

A dual-action bike is one that features moving handlebars. It targets both the legs and the upper body.

A fan, or air cycle, bike features a fan near the pedals. This fan adds extra resistance during pedaling, which can be great for a HIIT workout. These bikes may also come with moving arms for an added workout challenge.

Risks and safety

People may avoid outdoor cycling due to safety concerns, such as crash risk, adverse weather conditions, and a lack of safety.

Although stationary bikes offer fewer risks, they still come with certain safety considerations.

For example, positioning the seat and handlebars incorrectly could lead to strains. A narrow bike seat can also cause discomfort for new users.

Anyone beginning a new exercise routine should start slow and pay attention to how their body feels. Overtraining or moving too quickly into a new routine can lead to stress injuries.

People who live with children should make sure that any stationary bikes are safely out of reach. While most newer bikes come with built-in safety features, only individuals old enough to follow safety guidelines should operate them.

Summary

A stationary bike is a popular and convenient option for exercise. Indoor cycling can provide many health benefits, such as improving body composition, lowering blood pressure, and increasing overall fitness.

People can alter indoor cycling workouts for individual health and fitness goals. A beginner cyclist may benefit from a relaxed spin session, whereas an experienced athlete may prefer a HIIT workout to further improve their cardiovascular fitness.

Regardless of individual fitness goals, many people can use a stationary bike workout to help them enhance their health and overall well-being.

Stationary Bike Workout Benefits

Fortunately, you can reap the same health-boosting benefits with indoor cycling, thanks to a plethora of stationary bikes and cycling apps. And if this is your first time hopping in the saddle, many indoor bikes and cycling machines provide on-demand workouts and tutorials to help you get started.

Here are some of the greatest benefits of stationary bike workouts. Plus, exactly how indoor cycling can help you burn calories, build endurance and much more — without leaving the comfort of your home.

8 Stationary Bike Benefits

1. It’s Gentle on Your Joints

Climbing aboard a cycling machine is a low-impact cardio workout that tends to be comfortable on sensitive joints. In fact, cycling is often used in rehab for joint-related issues because it eliminates some of the impact in other forms of exercise like running.

“Cycling is easy on your body because it’s a closed chain exercise, which means it’s connected to a fixed object — in this case, the pedals — creating less stress on the body,” explains Dyan Tsiumis, CPT, a personal trainer with MYX Fitness and Openfit. “This closed chain makes it a gentle option for people who want an intense workout without stressing their joints.”

2. It Strengthens Your Lower-Body Muscles

It’s important to keep your joints healthy as you age in to prevent stiffness and muscle imbalances. Joints that are able to move through their full range of motion help their surrounding muscles gain more strength during exercise, making your workouts more effective.

Thankfully, joint-friendliness is one of the main benefits of riding a stationary bike.

“The movement [of cycling] helps lubricate the joints, thus helping the bones. And by adding resistance, you can build lower-body muscles and strength,” says Tiffany Berenberg, CPT, a certified personal trainer and studio manager for Life Time in Minnesota.

In fact, regular cycling can help reduce stiffness and joint pain commonly associated with exercise in people living with osteoarthritis, according to a March 2016 study in the ​Journal of Rheumatology​.

And because indoor bike machines simulate outdoor terrain, you’ll ride in and out of the saddle targeting your quads, hamstrings, calves and glutes.

“While seated, you will build the gluteus and hamstring muscles, and when you lift to ride out of the saddle, you build the quadriceps as well as the gluteus muscles,” Tsiumis says.

3. It Burns Lots of Calories

If you’re looking to lose weight, indoor cycling can help, says Todd Buckingham, PhD, an exercise physiologist with the Mary Free Bed Sports Rehabilitation Performance Lab. “Be consistent with your biking workouts. Try to ride every day for at least 30 minutes each day.” Beginners should aim to do one to two indoor cycling workouts per week.

Your caloric expenditure largely depends on your exercise intensity. The harder you work, the more stationary bike calories you burn.

For example, a 155-pound person who cycles for 30 minutes on a stationary bike can burn around 252 calories at a moderate pace and 278 calories at a vigorous pace, according to Harvard Health Publishing.

However, the same 155-pound person, who cycles 30 minutes at a competitive pace of 16 to 19 miles per hour, can burn around 421 calories, according to the American Council on Exercise.

Keep in mind that these numbers are just estimates and that your calorie burn depends on your biological sex, age, weight, body composition and resting metabolic rate, among other factors, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Here’s another calorie-burning benefit of cycling machine: You’re able to adjust the level of resistance. That way, you can increase your exercise intensity without having to pedal faster.

4. It’s Convenient and Customizable

One of the most common workout excuses? “I just don’t have the time.” Meanwhile, one of the advantages of cycling indoors is that you can do it for as little or as much time as you want — all in the comfort of your own home.

“Stationary biking is a great alternative to outdoor cycling for many individuals due to the convenience,” says Emily Booth, the education manager for cycle at Life Time fitness centers.

One of the biggest benefits of stationary cycling is that the weather doesn’t impact your workout, and you can control the intensity by adjusting the speed and resistance, so you can design a workout that fits your specific training program.

“The terrain is dictated by your resistance, so you can create your own experience each time you get on the bike. You can add hills and flat roads, or do recovery or endurance rides. The cycling world is your oyster,” Tsiumis says.

5. It Builds Endurance

Just like many other forms of cardio, indoor cycling benefits your heart health while strengthening your muscular endurance. The amount of time you spend in the saddle at different resistance levels, along with your cadence (revolutions per minute) trains your lower-body muscles to be efficient and keeps your heart rate up, Berenberg says.

Stationary bikes benefit cardiovascular fitness just like outdoor cycling, with the added perk that there is no ‘coasting’ on a stationary bike. You have to work continuously,” Booth says.

As you get stronger over time, you’ll want to increase the resistance and time you spend on the bicycle machine to continue challenging your muscles.

6. It’s Safer Than Riding on the Road

According to cycling statistics, 25 percent of cyclist deaths are the result of drivers trying to overtake bike lanes between intersections.

Biking indoors avoids cycling-related dangers from vehicle traffic or dangerous roads, making it a helpful alternative for anyone living in an area that isn’t favorable for outdoor cyclists.

7. It Can Boost Your Mood

Generally, doing any form of regular exercise and physical activity, including indoor cycling, is associated with reduced stress and anxiety, according to a July 2018 review in ​Current Psychiatry Reports​.

And the good news is that you don’t have to ride for very long to feel the mood-boosting benefits of indoor cycling machines. Just 15 minutes of riding a stationary bike can help decrease cortisol levels among people living with major depression, according to a small December 2013 study in ​BioPsychoSocial Medicine​.

8. It Provides Community Support

Cycling can be an intimidating sport to break into. If you’re nervous about exercising around other people, an indoor cycling routine can help you reach your goals from the comfort and security of your own home.

And of course, it can also be social. If you have a cycling app or own an indoor bike that offers live group cycling classes, they allow you to enjoy these indoor cycling benefits in a team atmosphere. “If you’re riding with a friend with a different fitness level than you, [stationary cycling] lets you ride together, but at your own individual pace,” Booth says.

Try This 30-Minute Stationary Bike Workout

Ready to hop in the saddle for your first indoor ride? Try this indoor cycling workout designed by Berenberg.

“It lets you build up to a threshold, hold steady to work on a smooth cadence with resistance and ends strong with a quick 3-minute push,” she says.

For the greatest cycling machine benefits, be sure to use the RPE (rate of perceived exertion) scale to help you adjust the resistance in your workout. Consider 1 a soft pedal and 10 an all-out effort.

Stationary Bike Workout For Beginners

The bike is the chosen cardio machine for those who have injuries or suffer from arthritic joints thanks to the cyclical movement, which places minimal pressure on your critical joints. Equally, it’s ideal for beginners too, who haven’t grown accustomed to high-impact workouts.  

As a budding new fitness enthusiast, you mustn’t make high impact, high-calorie burn workouts your priority. Instead, focus on longer workouts to help improve your endurance so that you can perform high-intensity exercises efficiently in the long term. 

Also, it’s important to remember that your priority should be to stay safe and not try too many things all at once. Take each day as it comes or a week at a time and write down the goals you may want to achieve. You should avoid overexerting yourself by dealing with the pain during the workout – you should feel the challenge but not to the point where you’re writhing in pain! 

The below workouts are tried and safe but remember that everyone’s different, so do what you feel is the most comfortable for you in terms of time intervals and methods. 

Low-High Intensity Interval Training

As a beginner, this type of workout plan is ideal as you let your body adapt to bursts of high-impact intervals. Then, you give it a downtime for recovery during the low-intensity intervals. The latter also gives you something to look forward to during the rigorous portions. 

You might be thinking this won’t be effective at burning calories, but actually, it’s been proven to shift more calories than just pedaling at a constant speed.

The adaptations and sharp changes that the body experiences from high to low-intensity intervals challenge your body not to get used to the consistency, thereby using up more energy and burning more calories. 

To do this:

• Begin: A low impact, 5-minute warm-up to start with will ignite your muscles for the work ahead. Pedal at a moderate pace until you feel warmed up.
• Workout: After the 5 minutes are up, jump straight into a 30-second sprint, pedaling with all your effort. Rest for 10 seconds and then perform the 30-second sprint again. Make this pattern about 10 times, all in all giving you a good 15-minute workout on your bike. 
• Rest: Once you’ve completed the rounds, pedal slowly for 5 minutes for your heart rate to get back down to rest.

After a week to a fortnight of performing this workout, make it your aim to progress by adding another 5 minutes to the workout. Then, try this out for about a week and see how you feel. 

You can even change it up by performing 40-second sprints and 10-second rest intervals if you’re up to the challenge. Or continue with the same interval pattern but extend the overall time to 30 minutes. 

Performing a 30-minute workout is golden because that’s achieving the recommended amount of exercise per day. Once you’re at this point, you can build up to more challenging high-intensity workouts.

Beginners Calorie Burner 

For those beginners who want to be pushed to their limits, this calorie burner workout is going to do just that! As a reward, you can burn up to 15 calories in just one minute – that’s 150 calories in 10 minutes! It’ll challenge your body and significantly improve your endurance in the long term.

To do this:

• Begin: Pedal at a moderate pace for about 5 minutes to get your muscles warmed up.
• Workout: Putting in your best effort, cycle for about 90 seconds, then have a 90-second recovery break where you cycle at a level that’s half of your best effort. Switch it up then, put in your best effort, cycle for 60 seconds, and then have a 30-second recovery break where you cycle at a level that’s about 70% of your total effort. Keep alternating between the two sets for 30 minutes or more if you can! 
• Rest: Cycle for 5 minutes at a gentle pace and allow your heart rate to come down slowly. 

Strength Train

Contrary to mainstream beliefs about building muscles, you don’t have to lift weights to build and tone muscles. As a beginner, your bike can be your avenue to training your body to be competitive and helping you achieve goals like strength building in a safe way.

Stationary bikes have a dial or similar that lets you change the “rate of perceived exertion” or RPE, the intensity of the resistance on your bike that comes in levels. A level 4 RPE should be a comfortable pace for beginners and be used in your warm-up. You should use levels 5-6 during the workout periods, though.

You can build muscles by adding RPE or resistance on your bike, which will feel like you’re cycling up a hill. Initially, you’ll notice that as you add in the resistance, you slow down. But that’s because your leg muscles are expelling more energy that, in turn, makes your leg muscles, glutes, and quads tone up and get stronger. 

If you have some dumbbells handy, you can always perform bicep curls as you’re pedaling, so you can give your arms and upper back a good workout at the same time. 

It’s important that when adding in resistance, you keep your lower back safe by not exerting too much pressure on it. You can do this by positioning yourself out of the saddle in a “danseuse” position, so your glutes and quads take the bulk of the pressure rather than your lower back. 

Do this every 5 minutes or so, and it’ll also encourage your body to use dormant muscles. 

Conclusion

The above workouts will give you a headstart to getting the most out of your best stationary exercise bike every week, allowing you to develop a fitness goal for yourself. It’s important to remember not to overexert yourself if you experience too much pain and feel like you can’t go on. 

Instead of giving in altogether, try pedaling at a slower pace during workout intervals or add some extra seconds to rest intervals. 

Also, you can try listening to some music, watching some TV, or teaming up with a workout buddy to help you through the longer 30-minute workouts.