Training guide
To use an air bike (also sold as an assault bike, fan bike or echo bike), set the seat so your knee keeps a slight bend at the bottom of the stroke, hold the moving handles, and pedal while you push and pull with your arms. There's no resistance knob: the faster you go, the harder the fan pushes back, and a little more speed takes a lot more effort. Start with 10 to 20 minutes at a pace you can talk at, then add short, firm pushes.
Air bikes build fitness well: on air bikes, a month of short sprints raised fitness as much as steady riding, and 8 weeks of intervals raised it about 10% in older adults. They don't burn the most calories of any machine in the studies we found, and the calorie number on the screen is an estimate.
This guide covers the set-up step by step on the 3D figure, the fan, arms and legs, sprints and intervals, calories, your knees and back, safety, and a first workout to follow.
An air bike is an exercise bike with a fan for a flywheel and handles that move with the pedals, so your arms push and pull while your legs drive. Makers sell it as an air, assault, fan or echo bike. "There are no resistance knobs to adjust": you make it harder by pedalling faster and pushing and pulling harder, as one maker's manual puts it.
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By the fan laws in an engineering sourcebook for industrial fans, the power a fan takes rises with the cube of its speed. On a real air bike, small changes in pedal speed changed the power a lot. So a little more speed costs a lot more effort: start every push firm and hold back in the first rounds.
Adding the arms made the same power feel easier for almost no extra oxygen, and in a lab study the arms did about a fifth of the work and hard efforts lasted about twice as long. So at the same felt effort you work harder than on a legs-only bike, and your heart rate runs higher.
On air bikes, 4 weeks of all-out 10 or 20-second sprints raised fitness as much as 30 minutes of steady riding (by about 12 to 14%) in 32 active adults, and 8 weeks of 4-minute intervals raised it 10 to 11% in older adults and in adults with type 2 diabetes, with no serious adverse events. Sprint intervals on ordinary bikes give similar results.
At the same felt effort, the air bike used less energy than a treadmill, rower or ski machine in one small lab study and about the same as a treadmill in another: two small studies that disagree. For a 70 kg person, 20 minutes of hard interval cycling is about 205 kcal (our arithmetic from the Compendium of Physical Activities). We found no study of an air bike's calorie display; a fan rowing machine's display read high.
Hard intervals are safe for most people built up gradually: there was about 1 serious heart event per 17,000 supervised sessions in heart patients. But rhabdomyolysis, a breakdown of muscle that can harm the kidneys, has followed first hard cycling classes and CrossFit-style sessions. Check with your GP first if you have heart disease or symptoms when you're active.
From one maker's manual ("there should be a slight bend in your knee when you're at the bottom of a pedal stroke"; the front knee over the pedal axle with the pedals level, rechecking the height "as moving the seat forward and backward can have the same effect as moving it higher or lower"; a warm-up of "about five minutes"; "Do not attempt to ride the bike in a standing position"; and not getting off until "both the pedals and the moving arms have stopped completely") and our move page ("The fan's resistance rises with effort: pace the first rounds"; "Keep the trunk upright"). The hip-bone starting height is our exercise bike guide's; the handle height and the 3 to 5 minutes are editorial.
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The movement on the figure: Air bike intervals
A stationary bike whose flywheel is a fan in a cage, with two long handles linked to the pedals: "The movement arms move whenever the pedals are turning". You'll see it sold as an air bike, assault bike, fan bike or echo bike, the names makers use; research calls it the Airdyne or an air-braked, all-extremity ergometer. Machines from several makers work the same way.
In some exercise lists "air bike" is also a name for the bicycle crunch, a floor exercise for your stomach; our bicycle crunch guide covers that.
The fan pushes air, so the faster it spins the harder it pushes back. One maker says slow riding gives an endurance workout and fast riding "a greater muscle endurance or anaerobic workout". An engineering sourcebook gives the fan laws: "reducing fan rotational speed by 20 percent decreases fan power by 50 percent", because power rises with the cube of speed (by our arithmetic, going 10% faster takes about a third more power). That's for industrial fans; on a real air bike, a lab study found power rose steeply and unevenly with pedal speed. Even air pressure changes the load on air-braked machines.
Most show time, distance, calories, watts, speed and pedal turns a minute (rpm). "The watts will show the amount of work produced in a particular time", as one maker puts it. How consoles count calories isn't published; see the calories section below.
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Your legs and arms together: the front of the thighs, glutes and calves drive the pedals, and the chest, shoulders, upper back and arms push and pull the handles. In lab arm-and-leg cycling the arms did about 22% of the work, and people left to choose leaned on their legs. We found no muscle-activity study of the air bike itself. It's cardio, not strength training: no trial has tested it for muscle size.
Anything from easy to all-out. The Compendium of Physical Activities rates general stationary cycling 6.8 METs (multiples of the energy you use at rest), high-intensity interval cycling 8.8 and the Airdyne used with the arms only 4.3; it has no figure for arms and legs together on an air bike. The NHS counts short bursts of maximum effort with rest as very vigorous activity, also known as HIIT (high-intensity interval training).
The bike feels awkward at first: in 15 adults, a flat-out fitness test on an air bike measured peak oxygen use a little lower than a treadmill test (by about 3.3 mL per kg of body weight per minute), but not in regular air bike users. Check the maker's weight limit (159 kg on one bike and 160 kg on another), and one maker says children under 16 shouldn't ride it.
On an Airdyne in 9 adults, adding the arms raised oxygen use by only 0.04 litres a minute at the same power but lowered perceived effort. In 12 men, arm-and-leg cycling raised the top of an incremental test from 292 to 337 watts and more than doubled the time they could hold a hard effort (638 against 307 seconds), and it felt easier.
At the same effort rating, oxygen use and heart rate were higher with the arms added. In 10 women, a legs-only bike gave lower heart rates than the Airdyne at the same felt effort, and in 8 men combined arm and leg work at double the power felt about as hard as arm work alone.
Arm-and-leg work can lift peak oxygen uptake to running levels, above legs-only cycling, in one older study; in another, the best share for the arms was 10 to 20% and gave the same peak as ordinary cycling. A staged AssaultBike test gave higher peak oxygen uptake and heart rate than a leg test in 12 men, while an air bike test read a little below a treadmill test in 15 adults. Small studies, different machines.
In a small 1981 study, 6 weeks of arm-and-leg training raised fitness as much as legs alone in 11 men, at a lower heart rate for the same work.
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Use your arms and legs together, with your legs leading. People left to choose favour their legs, and the arms tire first, so if your arms flag, keep them moving lightly rather than stopping (our suggestion). To rest your legs, most air bikes have foot pegs beside the fan for arms-only work; keep your feet on them, because the pedals keep turning.
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32 active adults trained 3 times a week for 4 weeks on air bikes: 3 sets of 8 all-out 10-second efforts with 5 seconds' rest, 3 sets of 8 Tabata-style 20-second efforts with 10 seconds' rest, or 30 minutes at a steady moderate-to-hard effort. Fitness (VO2 max, the most oxygen your body can use) rose 13.0%, 11.8% and 13.6%: the sprints matched steady riding in far less time. Small and short.
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51 sedentary adults aged about 65 did four 4-minute efforts at 90% of their peak heart rate, with 3 minutes easier between, on an Airdyne 4 times a week for 8 weeks, supervised: fitness rose 11% and didn't change with steady riding, and "All-extremity HIIT was feasible in older adults and resulted in no adverse events". In 58 adults aged 46 to 78 with type 2 diabetes, the same plan raised fitness 10%, and steady riding 8%, with no adverse events needing hospital or treatment.
On ordinary bikes, three 20-second all-out sprints with 2 minutes' easy pedalling between, a 10-minute session 3 times a week, raised fitness 19% in 12 weeks in sedentary men, the same as 50-minute steady rides. Across 16 trials, sprint intervals raised fitness about 8% and matched endurance training; across 28 trials in adults aged 18 to 45, intervals gave about 1.2 mL/kg/min more than steady training; and fewer sprints per session didn't cost fitness. Most of these were young, healthy people.
In 29 sedentary young adults, 10-minute sessions with just one or two all-out sprints of 10 to 20 seconds raised fitness 15% in men and 12% in women over 6 weeks, at an effort rated only 13 out of 20. A review by the same group says two or three 20 to 30-second sprints in 10 minutes bring real benefits.
The original was 7 or 8 efforts of 20 seconds at about 170% of VO2 max, with 10 seconds' rest, on a mechanically braked bike, in 7 people, 5 days a week for 6 weeks. 20 seconds on and 10 off on an air bike borrows the timing; our Tabata guide has the detail.
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Hard means 7 or 8 out of 10, where you can say only a few words, as our HIIT guide explains; sprints are all-out. Start firm rather than flat out, add efforts before you add intensity, and keep interval sessions to 1 or 2 a week, up to 3, with easier days between (our HIIT guide's editorial suggestion). The air bike trials trained 3 or 4 times a week, supervised.
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From the Compendium's values (METs times your weight in kg times hours):
In 13 young adults working at the same felt effort, the treadmill used the most energy, and the ski machine, rower and stair stepper used more than the Airdyne and a legs-only bike. In 12 adults with obesity at a moderate felt effort, the Airdyne used 6.3 kcal a minute, about the same as a treadmill (6.6) and more than a legs-only bike (5.3), and an arm-and-leg elliptical used 8.0. A study of seven other machines ranked the treadmill highest and bikes lowest; it had no air bike.
We found no study of an air bike's calorie display. The nearest evidence is one study of a fan rowing machine, whose monitor overestimated energy use by 2.3 kcal a minute at a moderate effort and 2.9 at a harder one in 43 adults with overweight or obesity; that maker says its monitor's calories assume a 79.5 kg person, and a fan rowing monitor under-read the first few strokes of a sprint. A 30-second air bike test read 464 watts higher than a standard lab sprint test. So the calories on one air bike won't match another make, a rower or a run (our reading), and no study has tested a conversion between them.
Some fitness pages say an assault bike burns up to 80 calories a minute, with no source. That's about four times the Compendium's top cycling value for a 70 kg person (our arithmetic). It's a console number, not measured energy use.
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Interval and steady training lost about the same fat when the work was matched, and intervals took about 40% less time; in that analysis of 13 trials, the cycling programmes didn't reduce fat mass while the running ones did. Short, low-volume intervals raised fitness but barely changed body fat across 47 studies, and another analysis of 21 found a small fall in fat mass against no exercise and no difference from steady training.
Exercise alone took off about 2.8 kg at 150 minutes a week across 116 trials, and the weight lost from a set dose of exercise tends to be less than the old 3,500-calorie rule predicts. No machine takes fat off your belly or thighs in particular; what you eat and your total activity matter most.
We found no study of the knee on an air bike. In 9 people with instrumented knee implants, cycling forces were smaller than in walking: about 119% of body weight at an easy 60 watts, rising with power and falling with a quicker cadence, as our exercise bike guide explains. Our reading: steady air bike riding is as kind to the knee as other cycling, while all-out sprints at high power raise knee force, so build up to them.
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We found no study of the back on an air bike. In 15 young men, lower-back muscle activity was about 11 to 17% of maximum on an arm bike at 50 to 100 watts and 7 to 10% on a leg bike. Sit tall, let the seat take your weight, and with back pain keep the effort steady at first (our suggestion).
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With knee pain, check the seat isn't too low and keep the effort steady, as our knee pain when cycling guide explains. With back pain, our back pain guides' rule applies: discomfort up to about 5 out of 10, settling within an hour or so and no worse the next morning.
The fan punishes speed, so you fade fast. Start firm and "pace the first rounds", as our move page says.
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Let your legs lead and your arms join in.
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Your knees come up high and the handles feel far away. Set a slight knee bend at the bottom, with your front knee over the pedal axle when the pedals are level.
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One maker says not to ride standing. Stay seated and pedal faster instead.
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Sit tall and keep breathing: heavy efforts against a held breath sent blood pressure very high in a lab study.
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Stay seated with your feet on the pedals until the pedals and handles have stopped.
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"The pedals will continue to rotate": put your feet on the foot pegs.
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It's an estimate. Go by how hard it feels and how long you rode.
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10 to 20 minutes at a steady pace you can talk at but not sing, building towards 30: our editorial starting point, the same as our exercise bike guide's. These minutes count towards the 150 a week of moderate activity the NHS recommends.
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Once 15 minutes steady feels easy: 4 rounds of 20 seconds firm and 1 minute 40 seconds easy, building to 8, as in our air bike workout for beginners (editorial; the move page's instructions are 10 to 30 seconds hard with easy pedalling between).
60 seconds hard and 120 seconds easy, 4 rounds building to 8, as our cardio intervals workout does; it says "A rower or air bike works the same way".
Three 20-second all-out sprints with 2 minutes' easy pedalling between, the 10-minute session from the sprint trial, or the Norwegian 4x4 (four 4-minute efforts). Build up to all-out over several weeks.
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Steady rides on most days if you like; hard intervals once or twice a week with easier days between. Cardio doesn't cost you muscle or maximal strength, but keep hard intervals 3 hours away from heavy leg training if leg power matters to you, as our plans advise.
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The air bike at 10 to 20 minutes steady, building towards 30, or the intervals above (editorial; its move page gives no dose). The upright and recumbent bikes are the step before: the recumbent bike's move page dose is 10 to 20 minutes at a moderate effort to start, building towards 30. The arm bike is the arms-only option (its move page's dose: 10 to 20 minutes, twice a week, in 3-minute bouts with 1 easy minute between); the rowing machine is another whole-body swap (its move page's dose: 3 rounds of 4 to 5 minutes at a pace you could hold a conversation at).
On 2 days a week: goblet squats and dumbbell Romanian deadlifts, 3 sets of 8 to 12 stopping 2 to 3 reps short of failure (our full-body gym workout); push-ups, 3 sets of 6 to 15 (our CrossFit-style workout for beginners), and one-arm dumbbell rows, 3 sets of 8 to 12 each side (our kettlebell workout B), for the pushing and pulling; side planks, 2 holds of 20 to 30 seconds each side (our loaded carry workout). After a ride, the quad and hip flexor stretches for 30 seconds each side and the doorway chest stretch for 30 seconds, for comfort.
3D demoDumbbell goblet squatIntermediate · A dumbbell
3D demoDumbbell Romanian deadliftIntermediate · A dumbbell
3D demoPush-upIntermediate · No equipment
3D demoSupported single-arm dumbbell rowIntermediate · A dumbbell + A bench or box
3D demoSide plankIntermediate · No equipment
3D demoStanding quad stretchBeginner · A wall
3D demoHalf-kneeling hip flexor stretchBeginner · No equipment
3D demoDoorway chest openerBeginner · A wallThe air bike workout for beginners takes you from steady riding to short pushes; the cardio intervals workout and the Norwegian 4x4 are the next steps; the Tabata-style workout is for the fit and healthy.
A first air bike (assault bike) workout: set up the seat, ride steady with your arms and legs, then add short, firm pushes once 15 steady minutes is easy.
25 minBeginner4 movesCardio machine, A wallA 25-minute interval session on a bike or rower: one-minute hard efforts with two minutes easy, building from 4 to 8 rounds.
25 minIntermediate1 movesCardio machineThe Norwegian 4x4, a well-studied interval session for raising VO2 max: four 4-minute hard efforts with 3 easy minutes between, on a bike, rower or treadmill.
40 minIntermediate3 movesCardio machine, A wallThree 4-minute blocks of 20 seconds hard and 10 seconds easy, with bodyweight moves and a minute between: the timing of the Tabata study, at home.
22 minIntermediate10 movesA wallUse the air bike for these plans' cardio and interval days at the same effort.
A full week that mixes intensities: three strength days, two cardio days, a mobility day and an easy day, never seven hard days.
3 training days45 minBeginner4 days a weekA 4-day upper/lower split: two upper body and two lower body gym days, each muscle trained twice a week, with sets, reps and progression.
4 training days50 minIntermediate3 days a weekA 3-day strength plan for men over 40 with power and bone work, two cardio days and mobility, built on research on ageing muscle.
3 training days45 minBeginner3 days a weekA weekly workout plan for women: three strength days, cardio and pelvic floor training, with the evidence on periods, pregnancy and menopause.
3 training days45 minBeginner3 days a weekA 12-week workout plan for men over 50: three strength days with power and balance work, cardio and recovery, at the gym or at home, with a 4-day option.
3 training days45 minBeginnerAt a steady, moderate effort most people need no check first. With a heart condition, or chest pain, dizziness or breathlessness when you're active, see your GP before hard intervals; people with heart disease do them within cardiac rehabilitation, where serious events were rare. If your blood pressure is high and not yet controlled, keep to steady riding until it is. On a beta blocker, go by how hard it feels rather than your heart rate.
With a pacemaker or defibrillator, the American Heart Association asks you to check with your doctor before upper-body strength training, because repeated arm movements can damage or dislodge the leads.
The air bike's handles are repeated, loaded arm movements, so until you've asked, an upright or recumbent exercise bike, where your arms stay still, is the simpler choice (our suggestion). After heart surgery through the breastbone, or a heart or lung transplant, follow your surgeon's advice before pushing, pulling or lifting with your arms.
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Keep the effort steady and the seat at the right height, and build up to sprints slowly. Our knee pain when cycling and back pain guides have the detail.
Let your legs do the work and hold the handles lightly, or use an upright or recumbent bike for a while (our suggestion).
The NHS says it's usually fine to keep doing activities you already do, but not to start a new vigorous activity in pregnancy. If you already ride an air bike, keep it steady and comfortable, and stop if you feel uncomfortable, too hot or unwell.
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For 48 hours before a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test, the NHS says not to do anything that leaves you out of breath, such as exercise, or ride a bike.
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One maker says to keep children and pets away from the bike whenever it's in use, "Never turn the pedal crank arms by hand", and not to put hands or feet near the fan; another says to keep children and pets away at all times.
If you get chest pain or pressure, feel faint or dizzy, are unusually breathless, or your heart races or beats irregularly during exercise, as our plans advise. The American Heart Association says these need immediate medical evaluation.
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For chest pain that feels tight, heavy or squeezing, or spreads to your arms, neck, jaw or back; a sudden, extremely painful headache, especially while straining; someone who faints while exercising; or palpitations that don't go away, or come with chest pain, breathlessness or feeling faint. Don't drive yourself to A&E.
Also call 999 for pain and swelling in one leg with breathlessness or chest pain: it can be a blood clot that has reached the lungs.
Severe difficulty breathing (gasping, choking or not able to get your words out) is a 999 call; being more short of breath than usual is a call to NHS 111, as the NHS advises.
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Ask for an urgent GP appointment or get help from NHS 111 for a headache that's triggered or made worse by coughing, sneezing, bending down or exercising.
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Keep pedalling easily for the last few minutes rather than stopping dead; if you feel dizzy, gradually stop pedalling and get off carefully, as one maker advises. See a GP after any faint, and if you keep feeling light-headed after slowing down gradually, or dizziness keeps coming back.
Get help from NHS 111 if your arm hurts when you exercise but the pain goes away when you rest, as the NHS advises. Arm pain that comes on suddenly with pressure, heaviness or squeezing across your chest is a 999 call.
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Same day (call NHS 111, or go to A&E if you feel very unwell): after a big or unusual session, such as hundreds of pull-ups, push-ups, dips or curls, a challenge or a new class, muscle pain, swelling or weakness far worse than the session explains, and dark pee (red, brown, tea or cola coloured), sometimes starting hours or days later. Dark pee isn't always there, so muscles far sorer, more swollen or weaker than the session explains still need the same-day check. It can be rhabdomyolysis, a breakdown of muscle that can harm the kidneys.
That includes a first air bike or CrossFit-style class, or an all-out calorie challenge. Call 999 for sudden, severe pain in a swollen, tight muscle, as our pain guides advise.
Get advice from NHS 111 now: you cannot move the knee or put any weight on it, or it is very painful, badly swollen or has changed shape; or the knee locks, gives way or clicks painfully. Painless clicking is normal.
See a GP if knee pain hasn't improved within a few weeks; our knee pain when cycling guide has the full list.
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Call 999 or go to A&E: back pain with chest pain, or back pain that started after a serious accident, such as a car crash.
Call 999 or go to A&E: loss of feeling or numbness around the genitals or bottom, new trouble peeing or controlling your bladder or bowels, changes in genital sensation during sex or problems with erections or orgasm, or pain, tingling, weakness or numbness in both legs. These are signs of cauda equina syndrome, which needs treating in hospital urgently. Don't drive yourself.
See a GP if pain spreading down a leg hasn't improved after a few weeks of home treatment, is getting worse or stops your normal activities. Sciatica on both sides, or weakness or numbness in both legs that's severe or getting worse, is a 999 call or a trip to A&E.
Aim for discomfort you'd call mild to moderate, no more than about 5 out of 10. It should settle within an hour or so, and your back should be no worse the next morning, as our back pain guides say. Pain, pins and needles or numbness spreading down a leg are the exception: stop, and see our sciatica guide.
See a GP if you think you have a hernia, a bulge or lump that may get bigger when you strain and smaller when you lie down. Get help from NHS 111 if you have a hernia and pain in or around it, a bloated tummy, you feel or are sick, you're vomiting blood or your vomit looks like coffee grounds, you're constipated, you have a high temperature or feel hot, cold or shivery, or you've suddenly become confused. Call 999 or go to A&E for a femoral hernia (a small lump at the top of your thigh, in your groin) with very bad tummy pain, sickness, being unable to fart or poo, a high temperature or sudden confusion.
Speak to your GP first if you haven't exercised for some time or have medical conditions or concerns, as the NHS advises. Get advice before hard or straining work if your blood pressure is uncontrolled (140/90 or higher at a clinic, or 135/85 at home), or you have heart disease or chest pain when you're active, a pacemaker or defibrillator, diabetic eye disease, glaucoma, a hernia, recent eye or tummy surgery, or you're pregnant, as our breathing guide lists.
Muscle soreness for a day or two after a new or harder session is common and fades. Sharp pain, or pain that builds during a set or lingers into the next day, isn't: swap to an easier version, and see a clinician if it persists, as our plans advise. The NHS says to stop exercising straight away if you feel any pain or become unwell, and to get help from 111 if symptoms worry you or don't go away.
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Not in the two small lab studies we found, which disagree. At the same felt effort it used less energy than a treadmill, ski machine, rower or stepper in one, and about the same as a treadmill (more than a legs-only bike, less than an arm-and-leg elliptical) in the other. It feels hard sooner because your arms work and the fan gets heavy fast.
We found no source for it. The Compendium's top cycling value is about 19 kcal a minute for a 70 kg person (our arithmetic), and no study has tested an air bike's calorie display.
For fitness, intervals give a little more per minute, and air bike sprints matched 30-minute steady rides in 4 weeks. For fat loss, there was no difference when the work was matched, and short sprint sessions barely changed body fat. Most people do well with both.
The original used a mechanically braked bike at about 170% of VO2 max, in 7 people. An air bike session borrows the timing.
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Fan machines' numbers don't carry across: an air bike's sprint watts read far above a lab test's, and a rowing machine's calories assume a 79.5 kg person. No study has tested a conversion.
There's no impact and little technique to learn, but rhabdomyolysis cases after cycling cluster at people's first hard class: 87% of 93 people in hospital after spinning were first-timers. Build up.
Adding the arms raised oxygen use only slightly at the same power, while making it feel easier. At the same felt effort you do more work, with the arms doing about a fifth of it.
An exercise bike with a fan for a flywheel and handles that move with the pedals, so your arms push and pull while your legs drive. It's also sold as an assault bike, fan bike or echo bike. There's no resistance knob: the faster you go, the harder the fan pushes back.
Set the seat so your knee keeps a slight bend at the bottom of the pedal stroke, then slide it so your front knee sits over the pedal axle when the pedals are level, and check the height again. Hold the moving handles at about chest height with your elbows soft, and stay seated with your feet on the pedals until they and the handles have stopped.
Pedal faster and push and pull harder to make it harder, and slow down to make it easier. The fan's resistance rises steeply with speed, so a little more speed takes a lot more effort: start each push firm, not flat out.
Yes, with your legs leading. Adding the arms made the same work feel easier for almost no extra oxygen, and in a lab study the arms did about a fifth of the work and hard efforts lasted longer.
Yes, if you build up: there's no impact and little technique to learn. Ride steadily for 10 to 20 minutes at a pace you can talk at for your first sessions, and add short, firm pushes once 15 minutes feels easy, as our air bike workout for beginners does.
After a 3 to 5-minute warm-up, 4 rounds of 20 seconds firm and 1 minute 40 seconds easy, building to 8 rounds over the weeks, then an easy cool-down. Once that's comfortable, try 60 seconds hard and 120 easy, as in our cardio intervals workout.
It depends on how hard and how long you go: for a 70 kg person, 20 minutes of hard interval cycling is about 205 kcal, by our arithmetic from the Compendium of Physical Activities. No study has tested an air bike's calorie display, and a fan rowing machine's display read high, so treat the number as a rough guide.
Not in the two small lab studies we found, which disagree with each other. At the same felt effort it used less energy than a treadmill, rower or ski machine in one, and about the same as a treadmill in the other. It feels harder sooner because your arms are working and the fan gets heavy fast.
It helps through the energy it uses, like any cardio. Interval and steady training lose about the same fat when the work is matched, and short sprint sessions barely change body fat, so what you eat and your total activity matter most.
For fitness they're a little better per minute: 4 weeks of air bike sprints raised fitness as much as 30-minute steady rides in one trial. For fat loss there's no difference. Sprints once or twice a week and steady rides on other days suit most people.
We found no study of the air bike itself. Ordinary cycling loads the knee less than walking, and the lower-back muscles work only lightly on arm and leg bikes. Sit tall, keep the seat at the right height and build up the hard efforts; with knee pain, see our knee pain when cycling guide.
All three build fitness. The air bike works your arms and legs together and suits short, hard intervals; an exercise bike is easier to ride steadily for a long time and lets your arms rest; a rowing machine works your legs, back and arms with a technique to learn. Pick the one you'll keep using.
Exercise education, not a personal prescription, and clinical review of these guides is pending. Check with a GP before starting hard training if you have a heart condition, chest pain, dizziness or breathlessness when active, and stop for sharp or increasing pain. Health disclaimer.
