Stationary exercise bikes are a popular choice for anyone looking to get in shape. They are a great way to stay active and improve your overall health whether from the comfort of your own home or at the gym.
But there are more benefits to using a stationary bike than you might know so we are going to break down the top benefits in this post.
1. Strengthening Your Muscles
One of the main benefits that anybody can reap from a stationary bike is strengthening muscles.
That said, it is of course only the muscles in your lower body that are strengthened by an exercise bike. As is the nature of biking, it uses your legs more than anything else.
Some of the muscles that benefit the most from a stationary bike include your quadriceps, your hamstrings, your adductors, abductors, your glutes, and your calves.
Now, this is the case for two main types of stationary bikes, the regular one and the recumbent bike.
Related: 7 best recumbent exercise bikes in the UK
However, what many people may not realize is that spin bikes, another type of stationary bike, also train more muscles than just your legs.
This is because on a spin bike, you’re usually standing up for a time during your workout, and that goes a long way in engaging your core, your back, and even your upper body to some degree.
Although an exercise bike is not the best strength training tool in the world, it's still quite effective at toning up those legs.
Looking for the right exercise bike for your needs? Check out our best home exercise bikes.
2. Calorie Burning
If you're doing cardiovascular exercise, chances are that you're doing it because you want to lose some weight. If you want to lose weight, it's calories that you need to burn. The simple reality is that an exercise bike is one of the biggest calorie burners out there, especially if you turn up the intensity.
There are plenty of studies out there that show that exercising on a bike is fantastic for calorie burn and weight loss.
On average, you could expect to burn up to 600 calories in a single hour of exercising on an exercise bike, and that's just with moderate intensity.
If you turn up the intensity and bike at a fast pace, you could easily burn over 1000 calories per hour.
Seeing as your average male needs up to 2500 calories per day, and your average female needs up to 2000 calories per day, you can just imagine how big the calorie burning and weight loss benefits are if you were to burn off 1000 calories in a single hour of biking.
This is something that can very quickly lead to substantial weight loss.
Related: Calories burned on an exercise bike
3. From the Comfort of Your Own Home
One of the key factors to losing weight is consistency and exercise bikes are one of the most convenient and safest pieces of cardiovascular equipment available.
The simple reality is that while you could bike outdoors on a real bike, chances are that you either live out in the countryside with poor roads or you live in a city with tons of traffic, and possibly bad roads as well.
But if you ride indoors on an exercise bike, you don't have to contend with poor terrain or bad traffic. Furthermore, when you're indoors, you also don't have to worry about the weather.
If you're unlucky enough to live in an area of the world where it's winter for several months of the year, or somewhere where it rains a lot, then biking outdoors certainly isn't the most exhilarating of times.
However, with an exercise bike, you can place it in any room, even in front of the TV if you wish, and bike to your heart’s content no matter what the outside conditions are like.
4. Cardiovascular Health Benefits
Coming back to your health, specifically your cardiovascular health, an exercise bike is a great choice.
The simple reality is that biking is considered to be one of the best forms of cardiovascular exercise for the health of your heart.
Here we have a study that confirms that biking is a fantastic form of aerobic exercise.
As little as 10 minutes of indoor exercise biking a day can drastically improve your overall Cardiovascular health.
For those of you who don't know, cardiovascular health refers to the health of your heart and arterial systems.
This looks at how efficient your heart is at pumping blood and oxygen to the rest of your body, which in part also includes your lungs, which you need to breathe.
Training your heart using an exercise bike is no different than training your muscles using strength or resistance training.
The more you train your heart, the better and stronger it gets, and the more efficiently it can transport blood, oxygen, and nutrients throughout the rest of your body.
The result here is not only that you'll end up having way better endurance and stamina, but you'll also just be much healthier in general.
Regular cardiovascular exercise and a strong cardiovascular system are linked to decreased instances of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cholesterol, and more.
5. Better Lung Health & Greater Stamina
Related to the above point, an exercise bike can also be beneficial because it helps to improve not only your heart health but your lung health as well.
Once again, training your lungs through cardiovascular exercise is no different than training your muscles through strength training.
The more you utilize your lungs in an intense manner, such as when you are biking at a high speed, the more you train them to take in and process oxygen.
In other words, the more you train your cardiovascular health, the stronger your lungs become, and ultimately the more oxygen your body can take in and process.
This in turn means that you have more oxygen flowing to your muscles, which leads to higher levels of stamina and output.
Improving both the health of your heart and lungs leads to greater stamina and endurance.
The more oxygen your body can take in thanks to stronger lungs, and the more blood and oxygen your heart can pump to your muscles, the longer they can work without fatiguing.
6. It’s Low Impact
Another benefit of the stationary bike is that it is a low-impact exercise. For those who don't know, low impact means that there is not much of an impact, if any at all, on your knees or hips.
This is opposed to high-impact exercises, such as running where your feet will leave the ground and cause an impact as they connect with the ground again.
With a bike, your feet never leave the pedals, which means that there is zero impact on your knees.
If you're someone who has knee or joint problems, then this is by far one of the best types of cardiovascular exercise for you.
7. Exercise Bikes Are Space Efficient
Something else that you might be able to appreciate about an exercise bike is that it is a relatively space-efficient piece of exercise equipment that you can easily fit in your home.
This is unlike other pieces of exercise equipment, such as treadmills or ellipticals, which take up substantially more space.
If you have a small space to deal with, such as an apartment, then an exercise bike is a great option to consider.
Related: Best Fold Up Exercise Bikes UK
Some Drawbacks of Stationary Exercise Bikes
Of course, just like exercise bikes have their benefits, they also have some drawbacks that you need to contend with.
First and foremost, if you'd like to strengthen your upper body, then an exercise bike is not the best piece of equipment for you.
Furthermore, if what you are looking for is the most intense possible type of cardiovascular exercise, then it's something like a rowing machine or a treadmill that you might want to go for, as they both tend to be a little bit more difficult to use.
Other than that, however, there aren't many drawbacks to exercise bikes.
Related: Exercise bike vs treadmill guide
Rounding Up
As you can see, there are plenty of benefits to using an exercise bike, and we haven't even covered quite all of them today.
If you are someone who wants to strengthen your lower body, improve your posture, burn some calories, and lose some weight, then we strongly recommend checking out an exercise bike.
