What Is An Assault Bike And Why Have One In Your Home Gym?
Share
An assault bike is a type of air bike that has a fan as a wheel and, as well as pedals, features two handles that force you to use your arms as well as your legs during your workout.
This makes it an excellent piece of gym equipment for a full-body workout that will get your heart rate up and ensure that every muscle in your body is working hard.
An assault bike is also a very versatile piece of equipment because you can use it at any point in a workout. You may decide it’s the best tool for a whole-body warm up, or it could be how you choose to finish off a session in the gym.
Because of how this piece of kit works (which we’ll come to next), you can also use it for any level of cardio training you wish. In general, cardio training is broken down into exercise zones that track the intensity of what you’re doing.
And an assault bike allows you to work in pretty much any zone because it adapts to your input.
Why is an assault bike so hard?
This brings us on to why the assault bike is considered such a brutal piece of equipment by many – because your effort directly correlates to how hard it is to use the bike. Let us explain…
An assault bike uses fan-based air resistance that means using this piece of equipment gets progressively more challenging the harder you push. That’s why an assault bike workout often feels so hard.
It’s because as you increase your intensity, the bike makes it harder to pedal with your legs and pump with your arms because your effort is increasing the resistance in the machine – clever, right?
The other reason why the assault bike is so hard is that it works your whole body. Unlike conventional exercise bikes where your legs do all the work, this piece of kit doesn’t give your arms or your legs a moment’s rest.
You need to pump the handles and pedal with your feet, all while balancing on the bike. This means you’re activating your core, your leg and your arm muscles all at the same time.
What muscles does an assault bike work?
All of them. We’re not kidding. It hits your:
- Upper body
- Core
- Lower body
Upper body
The pushing and pulling of the handles ensures you’re activating and using your shoulder, chest and arm muscles. Because you’re switching between those two movements, you hit different muscle groups with each cycle.
When you push, you typically use your triceps, shoulders and chest in the movement. Meanwhile, when you pull, you’re engaging your biceps, back and forearms.
Carrying out both movements is important for all-round physical fitness because research suggests that, on average, our “pushing” muscles are 1.5 to 2.7 times stronger than the muscles we use to “pull”.
Therefore, by using an assault bike you’re working both sets of upper body muscles, which can help to reduce the gap.
Core
Your core muscles are always working while you’re on an assault bike because these are what give you stability and control in your movements. The muscles in your core are broadly split into stabilising muscles and global movers.
To keep your spine stable, you need both of these sets of muscles to be working hard. The nature of the movement on an assault bike means you’re targeting both of these muscle groups without even thinking about it.
Lower body
Then we come to your legs, which are powering away on the pedals. This movement will typically see you using your quadriceps, calves and hamstrings to generate power on the bike.
Your legs are your foundation, so you need to strengthen them to maintain your mobility. What’s more, having strong leg muscles has been found to lower your risk of heart failure.
This is because when you have strong legs, you stay active later in life and this has the knock-on effect of helping better control your blood pressure and blood sugar, while improving circulation.
How many calories do you burn on an assault bike?
This is a question we often get asked and the truthful answer is that it depends on the level of effort you’re putting in.
But don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you have to do complex maths to work out your calorie burn rate. The assault bike’s LCD display tracks your performance as you work out and one of the metrics it will share with you is the calories you’re burning.
As a rough guide though, you can burn as many as 80 calories per minute if you’re putting in a particularly intense interval session on this piece of kit. However, that doesn’t mean you have to go that hard.
Scale your exercise to suit both your fitness level and the stage at which you’re hitting the assault bike in your workout.
How do you use an assault bike correctly?
It can take a few attempts to find your rhythm on this piece of equipment, so start slowly and build up your pace.
The general advice if you’re new to using an assault bike is to set a moderate pace and do a short set of intervals. A good starting point is two minutes on to one minute off, three times through. Then you can start increasing your intervals.
Other than that, how you use your bike will depend on what kind of workout you’re planning to do. The versatility of the assault bike is one of its greatest strengths as a piece of equipment.
You can do your whole workout on there if you want – working at different intensities over the course of 30 minutes, for instance.
Or you can include your assault bike as part of a hybrid circuit of exercises, where you go for time or calories burned as part of a rotation. There are also HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts specifically for assault bikes.
The key, as with any exercise equipment, is to think about how you want to incorporate this particular piece of kit into your workouts before you start. That way, you can approach your assault bike with a plan in mind and ensure you’re getting the most out of your time in the saddle.