Exercise Bike Basics

We all know that exercise is important to our health, but there are many barriers to exercise such as time constraints, convenience, weather conditions to name a few.

Exercise bikes are great because you can set them up at home. You don't have to go in the nasty weather to get a workout. It sounds cheesy, but you can workout in the safety and comfort of your own home. Gyms can be uncomfortable and intimidating environments at times. Having a bike at home also means you can save time on travelling to the gym.

Its important to adjust the bike to your size. Seat height is an important factor. You want to have the leg almost straight at the bottom of the pedal stroke, probally about 5 degrees of bend in the knee. This allows you to get maximal power out of each pedal stroke.

Also you want to keep a good posture on the exercise bike. Avoid to much rounding of the shoulders and back if you can. Look out in front and try to limit looking down as this can put your neck in an awkward position.

There are a few types of sessions you can do on the bike. If you only have a 10 mins spare, then its great to just jump on at various times of the day and expend a bit of energy. Its one way to transform your evening TV watching time into something more productive from a health perspective. It can still be fairly relaxing, but just roll the legs over and expend a few extra kilojoules. This will all add up over time.

If your keen to push your fitness a little you can do interval training on the bike. This is periods of high intensity work, inbetween rest periods, in which you just pedal easily to recover. Interval training is a great way to get a high quality session into a short space of time. The exercise bike is a great way to perform interval training as there is no impact on the joints.