Riding an exercise bike is a powerful way to burn calories which can help you lose weight, burn fat, and stay in shape.
Indoor cycling is a nearly risk-free activity offering a non-impact workout that’s easy on your bones, joints, and tendons, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be intense.
In this article, we’ll give you a breakdown of how many calories you’ll burn while riding, and lots of helpful tips to boost your burn to help you reach your goals safely and faster.
What are calories and how do they work?
A calorie, as we all know, is a unit of energy used to calculate the energy in the food we eat on a daily routine and burn through our activities. We also burn calories through exercise and the calories we absorb through the amount of nutrition (food) we consume like protein. Other strategies for burning calories include various exercises and activities. Walking, running, jumping, yoga, strength training, swimming, and one hour of full-speed exercise bike, for example. These activities burn enough calories to help you lose weight and build a stronger, healthy body. Aerobic exercise can aid in the maintenance of a person’s heart, lung, and circulatory system.
Calories Burned Riding At Different Levels
Our bodies are amazing machines.
When we do cardio exercises, they take calories from the caloric food we eat and the fat we’ve stored and convert them into energy to fuel that movement. These cardiovascular exercises help a lot in the improvement of the body.
How many calories you will need when you exercise depends on several factors.
Your gender age, height, and weight will all play a part, as will how intensely you exercise. Our estimations that follow are based on a 40-year old female who is 5’5″ tall and 150 pounds and a 40-year old male who is 6’0″ and 200 pounds.
Calories Burned Riding At A Low Intensity
Low-intensity exercises are defined as working at between 40-54% of your maximum heart rate. If you’re a numbers person, you can determine your estimated maximum heart rate with the following formula:
220 – Your age in years = Max Heart Rate
Once you have that number, multiply it by .4 and .54 to get the beats per minute of your heart rate range that constitute low-intensity exercise.
Our example female would burn around 4 calories per minute riding an exercise bike at a low intensity, and our example male would burn approximately 6 calories per minute. That means, in a 30-minute session you could work off between 120 and 180 calories.
Calories Burned Riding At A Moderate Intensity
Moderate-intensity exercise is when you’re working at 55-69% of your max heart rate.
Here, you’ll feel like you’re working harder and maybe a bit short of breath. If you’re in this zone, you’ll be able to talk and carry on a conversation, but singing would be impossible.
Our sample female would burn 10 calories per minute riding at a moderate intensity, and our example male would rack up closer to 13 per minute.
Calories Burned Riding At A High Intensity
High-intensity exercise is when you’re working at 70% or above of your max heart rate.
This can be uncomfortable for some people, and you may not be able to do it for an extended period. That said, high-intensity exercise is extremely efficient when it comes to burning calories.
Our female candidate would scorch around 12 calories per minute riding at this intensity, and our male could burn up to 16. That means in just 30 minutes you could use between 360 and 480 calories while riding an exercise bike if you can keep a high intensity.
Ways To Boost Your Burn When You Ride
There are two main ways to burn more calories when you’re riding an exercise bike.
” You can either ride harder or ride longer “
Nearly everyone can safely add both intensity and time to their workouts to rack up their results, as long as you do it the right way. Here are some pro tips to make it happen.
How To Ride Harder
In the numbers above, it’s pretty clear that riding harder is a good way to burn more calories, but it’s not always easy to accomplish.
If you’re just starting out and want to boost your intensity, or if you’re an experienced rider looking for a challenge, try one of these methods.
- Intervals. Use either a pre-programmed setting on your exercise bike, or watch the clock. Try for a 2:1 ratio, meaning you get 2 minutes of recovery for every 1 minute of hard work. Crank up the resistance, or step up your speed by 10 or more rotations per minute during the interval, and back it off to catch your breath during the recovery.
- Tabata. A shorter version of interval training, this is a high-intensity workout that adds bursts of speed with short recoveries. To do it, watch your clock and push hard for 20 seconds by picking up your pace, then recover for 10 seconds. Repeat eight times for a four-minute circuit. Then, ride at your average pace for a minute and do it again!
- Hills. Try using the random setting on the bike, or creating your own fun hill training profile. Every minute, change the resistance on your bike by at least three. For example, once you’ve done your warm-up, ride your first minute at a resistance of 3, your next at 6, the following at 2, and then the next at 5. This will keep your muscles guessing and your heart rate pushing hard.
If you are a newbie and you have some doubts you should consult a DPT or coaching will be helpful.
How To Ride Longer on Stationary Bike
If you would rather add time to your daily workouts, you’ll want to ramp it up safely.
First, make sure you plan accordingly if your sweat session is going to jump from 30 to 45-minutes, for example. You’ll want to ensure you can still make it to work or home on time, so you may need to wake up a bit earlier or rearrange your schedule.
Additionally, experts recommend that you choose the exercise bike from the top bike brands available. They also suggest that you don’t increase your training volume by a significant amount all at once.
To do it safely, add no more than 10% week over week to your load. So, if you usually do 30-minutes per day, the first week add just 3-minutes to each session.
In each week that follows you can safely add a few minutes more until you’ve worked up to your total time goal.
Do’s of Exercise Bike
- It is critical to warm up your muscles and cardiovascular system before beginning any activity. You’ll be undertaking demanding sprints and climbs, high-intensity intervals, or heavy resistance pushes during many cycling workouts, and it’s critical to prepare your body for the hard effort ahead. If you don’t have a warm-up regimen, start one now.
- Getting your cycle bike set up correctly will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your workout while also lowering your chance of injury.
- Mixing up your workouts will keep your body challenged in new ways while also allowing you to notice improvements from your program. Simply keep track of how your fitness level improves over time and change your resistance and pace as needed to keep seeing gains.
- Cycling instructors are on hand to offer advice and recommendations, but if anything doesn’t seem right, listen to your body and alter your workout accordingly. Don’t just focus on dieting choice of regular exercise is a better option. If you need to slow down, lower the resistance, or rest more, it’s all there for you. It’s your workout, after all! Just do what you can as you feel comfortable, and each time you return to your bike, challenge yourself to do a little more this will improve your performance.
Don’ts on Exercise Bikes
- Riding the spinner with one or no hands may increase the danger of damage. Keeping your upper body connected to the bike helps to balance your upper body and relieves unnecessary tension on your lower back. The only time you should ride without holding anything in your hands is when you’re drinking water.
- Riding at fast speeds without resistance puts you in danger of getting hurt. Riding against the current improves speed, power, and strength. Warm-up and cool-down are the only times you should not use resistance.
- Pedal with your leg on the pedals for maximum efficiency (the ball of the foot should be directly over the center of the pedal). The calves are engaged in this position, which can help with pedal power and efficiency.
- Every cyclist is at a different fitness level. Dropping the seat or removing it totally to prevent you from recovering is a dangerous idea for two reasons: one, you risk causing or exacerbating an injury, and two, you risk exposing yourself to liability. During a standing flat or climb, “brush” the nose of the saddle to achieve the same effect.
- Ignore the elbow measurement when determining the proper distance between your saddle and handlebars. It doesn’t work because our arms and shoulder aren’t always in proportion. This measurement can lead to unnecessary back rounding and a tendency to bounce, resulting in an unproductive ride. Make sure you’re close enough to comfortably grab the handlebars-you shouldn’t have to lunge for them, and your body shouldn’t be squished between them.
- Lifting weights while riding a bike is unproductive and dangerous. When weight training, the body and core muscles must be stabilized, which is difficult to achieve on a bike. Lifting weights while cycling will affect your heart rate response, which will make energy zone training difficult.
Conclusion
Riding an exercise bike is a safe and effective way to torch calories. Whether you’re looking to lose weight, get in shape, decrease your body fat, or just be healthy, it’s a method that nearly everyone can do.
There are lots of ways to ramp up your intensity, and they are fun to incorporate into your daily workouts.
