HIIT Spin Bike Workout

HIIT Spin Bike Workout

One of my Stockport personal training clients has recently suffered a broken collarbone. Determined as ever, that hasn’t stopped him exercising – we have worked on his legs and used the time to effectively boost his cardio fitness on the bike, given cycling is his passion! We used this HIIT spin bike workout to still train at a really high intensity despite the injury.

Using a heart rate monitor we devised a simple but very tough workout – ideal for when you are short on time but want to get a HIIT workout in. The idea was to keep his heart rate elevated and use a work/rest cycle that was determined by heart rate recovery, not by time.

To calculate the heart rate data needed for the HIIT spin bike workout, use this very simple formula…

• 220 – Your Age (in this case, the personal training client is 40) = 180
• 180 x .95 = 171 (95% of estimated maximum heart rate)
• 180 x .7 = 126 (70% of estimated maximum heart rate)

As soon as you have the figures, away you go! Time to kick the arse of a HIIT spin bike workout…

Warm up for two minutes by cycling at around 80 rpm. After the two minutes, increase the resistance and sprint until you hit your 95%. Try to make the sprint fast enough and the resistance hard enough that you hit 95% of your HRM (heart rate maximum) within 45 seconds.

As soon as you hit the 95% of your HRM, drop down a few gears and reduce your speed until your heart rate drops to your ‘recovered’ rate of 70% HRM.

As soon as you hit your 70% HRM figure, you start again and hit another high intensity sprint.

Repeat as many times as you can within a 20 minute period. The progress is measured by how many sprints you can hit within the workout – the fitter your cardiovascular system is, the more sprints you will manager as you will recover quicker. A faster recovery time indicates a more efficient CV system and a higher level of cardio fitness.

At the end of the 20 minutes, drop down the gears and gradually reduce your cycling speed for 5 minutes until you are fully recovered.

Post workout, make sure you stretch your hip flexors, quads, hamstrings and calves.

Interested in learning more about bike choices? Check out this site  www.topstationarybikes.com.

If the bike isn’t your thing, why not try the HIIT Rowing Machine Workout?

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