Keeping it interesting.

Hey guys. I have jumped back on the stationary bike for the last week. My knee injury is finally starting to go away. I get up at 5.am put on the news and peddle. I am starting off small riding 20minutes.

Today I have stepped up to 30minutes. The issue im facing is this is mind numbingly boring. It takes as much will power to stay on the bike as it does to actually peddle it.

So what can I do to keep I interesting? I am considering adding in a rotation of potent pre-workout supplements and hoping the buzz from them assists in increasing the intensity.

I may have to move the computer to bike and listen to music videos or something.

I wonder if switching to a HIIT based riding scheme would help?

Tommorow im going to move the computer near the bike and watch music videos. I hope that will help.

Thanks for the advice guys.

 

A few 50mg caffeine tablets will do the job if a pre-workout kick is what you want.

Maybe rotate low and high intensity days? 30 minutes steady-state Monday and Friday, and a few rounds of Tabata intervals on Tuesday and Saturday, for example.

 

Whats a Tabata interval?

Well a 50mg tab Is nothing. I have such a High caffine tolerance. I was looking at the Pre workouts with 200+ per scoop. I don't really start getting affected by caffine till 400 any ways.

 

See Mitch's answer.

Wow!

I recommend cycling off caffeine for a bit, maybe a week or two, to bring your tolerance down a bit. (To be fair, I did say a few tablets )

 

Did you just recommend caffeine and Tabata in the same sentence?! Are you crazy man?!

I can't really talk because I've done it plenty of times myself, but there's a good chance of feeling like you're coming off of Super Saiyan due to having it beat out of you after the first 20 sec. interval, which I imagine feels horrible for Saiyans. Nothing like 2 scoops of N.O. Explode or 2 scoops of Jack3d and a tabata session to feel like you're going to die. I have always tried to keep tabata sessions away from caffeine or high intensity workouts, they don't seem to go well together.

 

Shush man, you're going to spoil my fun!

 

Tabata Intervals

I thought I would give a little more information on these, since this is the method I used to go from 240lbs to 200lbs in about two months before I joined the Marine Corps. I've been pretty familiar with them for years now.


Tabata Intervals are more than just a high intensity activity for fitness. When you do them right you ramp your heart rate into the "red zone" (180 BPM). Because it is such a high intensity activity, you burn your immediate creatine (used for the first 5-10 sec. of energy output) and glucose (used for about 1 min. of energy output) stores. This happens all within the first minute or so in a 4 minute tabata round, the short break period between rounds are not sufficient for your creatine or glucose stores to replenish, so your body has to use fat stores for energy. A tabata set also forces a great amount of O2 (oxygen) into your blood stream, a necessary molecule for making fat molecules into energy. One of the benefits of tabata is that these increased O2 levels stay in your system long after a workout, so your body will use more fat stores for energy after the workout as well. Tabata is a very efficient fat burning method of exercise.


Sounds great right? Sure is, especially when you know you're doing them right because you're about to puke your guts out and feel like you just ran a mile long sprint. So how do you do a tabata round?

The basic requirements are that you do 8 20second rounds of work, with only 10 seconds of a break between rounds. This totals for 4 minutes of work. There are a few fine points and guidelines for exercises you should do with tabata for the maximum effect though.

1.) Pick a bodyweight exercise that involves a large majority of muscle groups in the body, preferably all of them. Weightlifting exercises do not go well with tabata and will set you up for injury. Some exercises involving a weighted object are acceptable for tabata. Examples would include swinging a sledgehammer on a tire, medicine ball slams, or tire flips.

2.) The exercise chosen should be capable of being performed with bad technique but maintain a low level of potential injury. This means highly technical movements are out of the question. Don't do clean and jerks, or one legged squat jumps, or burpees with a back flip. Why is this?

3.) The most important thing in a tabata round is MAXIMUM EFFORT. The objective is to perform the exercise as fast as possible every single round. Because of the maximum effort nature, technique tends to go out the window around the 5th round in a tabata interval, which is why picking an exercise that bad technique has a low potential of injury is important. My favorites have always been burpees, medicine ball slams, mountain climbers, sledgehammer/tire, step ups on a platform, and tire flips (the tire flips can be bad if your technique degrades so much you can't squat down correctly, maintaining a straight back).

The best method to ensure you are doing the correct level of work is to do a mock tabata round, only performing a single movement for 20 seconds and counting your repetitions. When you do the actual tabata round, you should try to surpass that number every 20 sec. round. This is not going to happen. If you do 20 ball slams in 20 seconds and do tabata correctly, you will be doing 2 ball slams on round 8 (and those 2 slams will most certainly feel like maximum effort!)

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You can also use tabata for more refined exercises like pushups or pull-ups but they do not serve the same purpose as intended from the tabata protocol method of exercise. Tabata increases your anaerobic endurance more than anything, with clear gains in aerobic fitness in the long run. When it is applied to refined movements such as a pushup, you miss out on the full body benefit and you're only going to be able to do more pushups better vs. gaining anaerobic/aerobic gains. To me, there is too much suck involved for such minimal benefits.

 

I just thought I would mention it, since Tabata is actually one of the only methods of exercise I would agree that talking to your doctor to see if you're healthy enough to do it is a factor for people who aren't already lean and fit, lol. If you hit caffeine before them it is very likely you're going to puke, that heart rate is going to sky rocket!

I used to love introducing some of the guys I used to workout with to tabata. They never failed to throw up, and it's usually projectile throw up as well.

 

I used to use Muscle pharm pre work outs when I was in mma. That always helped me through the worst.

Ill give it whirl caffine free and see what happens. Im going to wean off of caffine before I rotate in the prework outs though. You mentioned that caffine plus cardio is bad, why? I remember taking my prework outs, before hard cardio and banging out personal bests in time and speed. That feeling of I cant stop, I cant stop moving I have to get it out. That your going to come apart if you don't move on the peddles as fast as you can. God it felt epic.

How many total 4 minute tabata rounds should you do per session? Say a 30 minute stationary bike session?

You know I need to get a new copy of Real rides. Lost a lot of weight just following that guy.. Race day was fun. 75 total minutes from warm up to the race to the dual cool downs. I used to burn nearly 1200 calories in a session on that video.(likely higher as that is the generic number from the bike. I need to get a monitor set up for me)

 

Not so much normal cardio as high intensity cardio. Any activity that has you in the "red zone" of your heart rate for prolonged periods of time can be dangerous with a large amount of caffeine. Mostly it will just make you sick and puke though, it's not a great feeling.

In a 30 minute stationary bike session you can have three different approaches. Warm up for 5 min. on the bike, knock out a tabata round on the bike (it involves a large group of muscles-the legs- so it works ok-ish), then finish the last 21 minutes normal. Do it at the last 10 minutes of the bike workout, 4 minutes tabata with 6 min. cool down. Or, warm up, then knock out a tabata round of burpees and then do 30 minutes on the cycle. The last one would be the most effective for fat loss.

 

my uncle has always recommended what he did in the royal marines - 1 day of a tempo run (on a bike that would be the same rpm and resistance for a set time or distance), 1 day of a time trial (beat your best distance or time), 1 day of interval work

for intervals on a steady bike:
i like 30 on 30 off for 5 sets (10 mins) at a hard go
but my favourite is 100-110 seconds of low intensity cycling, then ramp up the intensity to max and go at it for 10-20 seconds and then lower the intensity again, repeat for 5 sets (10 minutes)

i only ever do intervals cos it feels like strength training not cardio and i can trick myself into it

 

It sounds like I just need to vary my bike work out by adding in some intervals. Thanks for the advice guys. I have 10lbs that wont come of, and I want to get below 300 asap and never look back...

 

Im not going to touch tabata with a barge pole other than to say well no not going there
But I will say if you are bored on the bike and don’t have any specific goals and have your computer handy look up a spin bike class on you tube, or an interval session there are loads on there for you to choose from and will add variety to your programme and keep things interesting there are also free podcasts out there as well

 

I didn't know there was interval programs on youtube. Gonna lookem up.

I don't know what you mean by specific goals.. I want to drop weight and improve my cardio.

 

If it's a spin bike do tabata intervals, if it's not a spin bike, sell it and buy a spin bike. It's much much easier to do high intensity work on a spin bike.

Unless you're going to enter the exercise bike Olympics, they're good for little other than warming up before you do some real exercise. It's like God invented the treadmill, then decided that no, treadmills weren't boring enough and so he invented the stationary bicycle. The stationary bicycle is responsible for more fat people than Dunkin' Donuts.

 

So, despite that I lost a ton of weight on a exercise bike, what do you think I should be doing? Running is out as im to heavy to run safely for my knees. So that leaves biking. Im not going to get hit by a car again so im not riding on the street.

Now if a spin bike is different from a stationary im lost as I have never heard of a spin bike.

 

If you're not so bored with cycling then don't worry about not having motivation. What works for you is best.

Walking is a great form of exercise, have you tried going for long walks at all? An hour upon waking up and after a glass of water is especially helpful to burn fat, and it will prep you for when you can start running.

 

Ero, I was trying to understand what he was saying? I don't have a lack of motivation, just a desire to keep it from being boring. Which I have suggestions for thanks to this thread.

I think I may have misunderstood what he is trying to say.

 

during my short lived affair with the exercise bike on my parents' living room, i made it barely tolerable by reading and listening to music while i cycled. maybe you could try that?