How does stationary bike burn fat

These bikes also allow you to clip into the pedals with sport-specific cycling shoes if you own them. Riding an upright stationary bike feels very similar to riding your regular outdoor bike. To get the best stationary bike workout for weight loss, you need to use resistance. It is important that you do not set the resistance too high when you are first starting out. You want to get a good work out, but cycling should not actually hurt, even for a beginner. If you are in continual pain while biking, it is a sign that your resistance is set too high for your fitness level.

You should also use good form when you ride a stationary bike. If you take a spin class, ask the instructor to set up the bike on your first ride. They will adjust the saddle so that your joints are protected and you are comfortable throughout the workout. If you are riding a stationary bike at home, set the saddle to a height that is roughly at the hip level.

As you pedal, this height should allow your legs to extend comfortably. You shouldn't have a deep bend in your knee as your pedal and you also shouldn't be tilting your hips in the saddle or reaching down to complete each pedal stroke. The handlebars should allow you to keep your back upright and comfortable. There is no need to set them at a level where you are reaching far forward or leaning to reach them.

If you don't have preset workouts on your stationary bike, use these ideas to promote weight loss when you ride. Again, be sure that you are healthy enough for exercise before you begin and always start with a shorter, easier workout when you are a beginner. If you do your stationary bike workouts for weight loss on a regular basis, you'll notice changes in your fitness level and body in a matter of weeks.

Get exercise tips to make your workouts less work and more fun. The effect of 12 weeks of aerobic, resistance or combination exercise training on cardiovascular risk factors in the overweight and obese in a randomized trial.

BMC Public Health. It also controls whether you will gain, lose or maintain the same weight. Everyone has a certain number of calories they use and burn each day just to function normally depending on factors like your gender and age.

Your maintenance calories are the number of calories you need to ingest that will help you function in everyday life and maintain the same weight, i. Now, when it comes to weight loss, a caloric deficit is required.

This means that you need to be eating fewer calories than what your body needs. So if your maintenance calories is a day, then a sustainable caloric deficit might mean you can only consume around calories. So how does the exercise bike come into this? Well, one way of creating a caloric deficit is by exercising. How many calories will I burn on an exercise bike? According to Harvard Health Publishing :.

A pound person who cycles at a moderate-intensity for minutes can burn calories. A pound person can burn for the same time and intensity. Stationary bikes only require a space big enough to fit one in.

This could be in your living room, your bedroom or even your garage. This means that you can use them anytime you like, no matter the weather.

You can cycle in the comfort of your own home without having to deal with hazards such as vehicles, pedestrians and even other cyclists. This means that they are not hard on the joints or ligaments like other exercises can be. It works the legs , particularly the quads and calves, but also the hamstrings and glutes. It relieves stress, anger, anxiety and you can take it all out on the pedal. In fact, the Tabata protocol was first studied with athletes performing bouts of intense activity on a stationary bike.

Jacqueline Crockford , exercise physiologist and education specialist at the American Council on Exercise ACE , suggests focusing on your rate of perceived exertion RPE to tailor this Tabata workout for you.

So by that thought, RPE of 5 equals 50 percent effort," Crockford explains. In the below workout, the "20 seconds of work" should be done at percent effort, so between an RPE of 8 and 10—you can choose to reach the target RPE by cranking up the resistance and pedaling at a more moderate pace, or opting for a middle-of-the-road resistance level with a quicker pace, she explains. During the rest and recovery parts of the workout, you should be doing as little work as possible to keep the pedals moving, so resistance should be very low.

Let's get to it! Developed by researchers at the department of exercise and sport sciences at the University of Copenhagen, the interval training method is organized by blocks of intervals, followed by two minutes of active recovery, Jessica Matthews, M. Matthews recommends using the same resistance throughout the workout—the key is that there is enough resistance to keep your pedal strokes smooth and controlled.

Then, you control the intensity level by speeding up and slowing down. We have updated the image to reflect the correct RPE. SELF does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional. If you can't commit 30 straight minutes to stationary biking, you can break it up into minute intervals and still gain benefit to your health and burn calories to help reduce belly fat.

Using a stationary bike for weight loss means you have choices. Once you can manage regular moderate-paced riding, work a little harder at a few of your weekly pedaling sessions. When you pedal your bike, increase the level or resistance you use at two of your workouts.

Go for 20 to 30 minutes at this higher intensity that raises your heart rate to about 75 to 85 percent of your maximum. You'll be left huffing and puffing and build up quite a sweat, but the effort will be worth it when you see your girth go down. An easy way to estimate your maximum heart rate is to subtract your age from If you want a more precise evaluation, seek out a gym that performs metabolic testing.

Steady-state exercise gets you started with fat loss, while high-intensity intervals turn up your fat-burning engine. The American Council on Exercise suggests that interval training burns more calories in less time and increases the production of fat-burning hormones. Every workout you do shouldn't involve HIIT, or high-intensity interval training. Consider doing two to three HIIT workouts on the bike per week, using these in the place of steady high-intensity workouts. Other days should still consist of moderate-intensity pedaling, or you'll risk burn out.