Air Bike Workouts: 6 Sessions for Beginners to Advanced

An air bike workout is any session on a fan bike (think Assault AirBike, Schwinn Airdyne or similar) where the big fan at the front supplies the resistance. Pedal harder and the fan pushes back harder, and because the moving handles make your arms work alongside your legs, even a short effort gets your heart rate up fast. That combination is why air bikes turn up in CrossFit boxes, rehab clinics and garage gyms alike. Below you'll find six sessions, graded from gentle to properly brutal, with work:rest ratios, rounds and a target effort for each, plus how to set the bike up and how to progress without burning out.

Why air bikes suit interval training

Most exercise bikes use a magnetic or friction brake, so resistance stays fixed until you turn a dial. A fan works differently: the air it has to shove out of the way resists you more the faster it spins, and the increase is steep, roughly with the cube of fan speed. Double your cadence and the bike demands far more than double the power.

In practice that means the bike never "runs out" of resistance. A beginner and an elite rower can share the same machine, and neither will ever find it too easy or too hard at a given effort level. You don't need to touch any settings between a recovery spin and an all-out sprint; you just push harder.

The handles matter too. Pushing and pulling with your arms recruits your chest, back, shoulders and core, so more muscle shares the work than on a standard upright bike. It's also seated and low impact, which makes it a good way to do hard intervals if running or burpees give your knees grief.

If you haven't bought one yet, our best air bike UK guide compares the main options, and if space and budget are tight our Strongology Scorpion review covers a compact fan bike at around £320.

Setting up the bike

Get the seat height right before anything else. Sit on the saddle with the ball of your foot on the pedal at the lowest point of its circle; your knee should keep a slight bend, somewhere around 25 to 35 degrees. If your hips rock side to side, the seat is too high. If your knee comes up towards your chest at the top of the stroke, it's too low.

Most air bikes also let you slide the seat forward or back. Set it so that with the pedals level (3 and 9 o'clock), your front knee sits roughly above the pedal axle. Hold the handles and check that you can reach them at their furthest point without locking your elbows or leaning forward off the seat.

Tighten the pedal straps if your bike has them. Air bike pedals are often wide platforms, and losing a foot mid-sprint is easy to do.

Technique cues

Push and pull with your arms. As your right leg drives down, your right arm pushes forward while your left arm pulls back. Think of it as rowing with each arm in turn. Don't just hang on to the handles and let your legs do everything, because the arm work is half the reason to own one.

Drive through the whole foot. Press down through the middle of the foot rather than your toes, and keep pedalling in circles. Stamping straight down is slower and tires your quads early.

Stay tall. Sit upright, chest proud, shoulders away from your ears. When you get tired you'll want to hunch over the console; resist it, since a collapsed posture restricts your breathing right when you need it most.

Brace, don't bounce. Keep your core lightly tight so your hips stay planted on the saddle. If you bounce, your cadence is higher than your control.

Breathe rhythmically. Match breaths to pedal strokes on steady rides. In sprints, breathe hard and fast through your mouth; holding your breath only makes the effort feel worse.

The effort scale (RPE)

Each session below gives a target on a 1 to 10 rating of perceived exertion (RPE). Roughly: 3 to 4 is easy chat, 5 to 6 is steady and a little breathless, 7 to 8 is hard enough that you can only say a few words, and 9 to 10 is flat out. The NHS describes vigorous activity as the point where you can't say more than a few words without pausing for breath, which lines up with RPE 7 and above.

We use RPE rather than calories or watts as the main target for a reason, which we'll come to below.

6 air bike workouts

1. Beginner steady ride (20 minutes)

• Work: 20 minutes continuous
• Effort: RPE 4 to 5
• Who it's for: complete beginners, or anyone on an easy day

Ride at a pace you could hold a conversation at, using your arms throughout. Aim to keep your RPM (or watts, if your console shows them) as even as possible from start to finish. When 20 minutes feels comfortable three times in a row, go to 25 or 30 minutes.

2. 30:30 intervals (10 rounds)

• Work:rest: 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds easy
• Rounds: 10 (10 minutes total)
• Effort: RPE 7 to 8 on the work, RPE 3 on the rest

Your first interval session. Pick a pace for the 30-second efforts that you can repeat all 10 times; if round 8 is much slower than round 1, you started too fast. Keep the legs turning gently during the recovery rather than stopping dead.

3. Tabata (20:10 x 8)

• Work:rest: 20 seconds all-out, 10 seconds easy
• Rounds: 8 (4 minutes total)
• Effort: RPE 9 to 10

Four minutes sounds short. It isn't. The 10-second rests barely let your breathing settle, so by round five most people are hanging on. Record your total calories or distance across the 8 rounds and try to match it next time, then beat it. Two blocks of Tabata with 4 minutes easy in between is a solid session for experienced riders.

4. 10-minute EMOM calorie targets

• Format: every minute on the minute (EMOM) for 10 minutes
• Task: hit a set calorie target at the start of each minute, rest for whatever remains
• Effort: RPE 7 to 8

Choose a target that takes you about 30 to 40 seconds, which gives you 20 to 30 seconds of rest. On many bikes that lands somewhere between 8 and 15 calories for most people, but ride a test minute first because the number depends heavily on your bike (see below). If you miss the target in two consecutive minutes, drop it by one or two calories for the rest of the session.

5. 60:60 threshold intervals (6 to 8 rounds)

• Work:rest: 60 seconds hard, 60 seconds easy
• Rounds: 6 to start, building to 8
• Effort: RPE 7 to 8

This one builds the ability to hold a hard pace, not just hit a peak. Aim for an effort you could sustain for about 3 or 4 minutes if you had to, and hold it evenly for the full 60 seconds. The goal is for your last round to match your first.

6. Sprint ladder

• Work: 10, 20, 30, 20, 10 seconds all-out
• Rest: 60 to 90 seconds easy after each sprint
• Rounds: 1 ladder for intermediate riders, 2 ladders (4 minutes easy between) for advanced
• Effort: RPE 10 on the sprints

The ladder hits maximum power on the short sprints and tests how long you can hold it on the 30-second rung. Rest properly between sprints; this is about quality, and a sprint done tired is just a hard interval. Save it for once a week at most.

Short on time? The 10-minute sprint session

You don't have to train for long to get fitter. In a 2016 study, sedentary men did three 20-second all-out cycle sprints separated by 2 minutes of easy pedalling, three times a week for 12 weeks, inside a 10-minute session. Their peak oxygen uptake rose by 19%, the same as a group riding 45 minutes at moderate intensity, and insulin sensitivity improved similarly in both (Gillen et al., PLOS ONE). It was a small study (nine men in the sprint group), so treat it as encouraging rather than definitive.

A 2026 narrative review describes this style of training as reduced-exertion high-intensity interval training (REHIT): usually two or three 20-second sprints within 10 minutes, and no more than a minute of hard work in total (Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences review). It's a review rather than new trial data, but it pulls together evidence that brief all-out sprints can raise cardiorespiratory fitness across a range of adults.

An air bike is well suited to it because the fan lets you go genuinely all-out without fiddling with resistance. Try: 3 minutes easy, 20-second sprint, 2 minutes easy, 20-second sprint, 2 minutes easy, 20-second sprint, 3 minutes easy.

Why calorie readouts differ between bikes

Air bike consoles don't measure calories directly. They estimate them from fan speed using a formula the manufacturer chose, and different brands (and sometimes different models from the same brand) use different formulas. A calorie on one bike can take noticeably more work than a calorie on another, which is why workouts written for one brand don't always translate cleanly.

So use calories, watts and distance to compare yourself against yourself on the same machine. Don't read too much into the "calories burned" total as a guide to what you've burned in real life, and don't worry if your EMOM targets look low next to someone else's on a different bike. The Assault AirBike Classic, Schwinn Airdyne AD8 and Strongology Titanium will all give different numbers for the same effort.

Common mistakes

Going out too hard. The fan rewards an explosive start, which tempts you to empty the tank in round one. You then spend the rest of the session fading. Even pacing gets you more total work.

Legs only. Gripping the handles and letting your arms go along for the ride turns the air bike into an expensive upright bike. Push and pull actively.

Every session flat out. If every workout is a Tabata, you'll feel wrecked and your numbers will stall. Most weekly riding should be easy.

Skipping the warm-up. Jumping straight into all-out sprints with cold legs feels awful and puts more strain on your heart and muscles than it needs to.

Slumping over the console. It's natural when you're blowing hard, but it cramps your breathing. Sit up.

Chasing someone else's numbers. See the section above. Different bike, different maths.

How often, and how to progress

The NHS recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity a week, and notes that short bursts of very vigorous effort (HIIT) also count towards your target (NHS physical activity guidelines). An air bike can cover a good chunk of that in not much time.

For most people, two or three air bike sessions a week works: one or two hard (sessions 2 to 6) and at least one easy steady ride. Leave a day between hard days. A sample week could be a Monday 30:30 session, a Wednesday 20-minute steady ride and a Friday Tabata.

Progress one variable at a time. You might add a round, lengthen the work interval by 5 to 10 seconds, shorten the rest, or push your calorie target up by one. Change two things at once and you won't know which one made the session harder.

If you're new to exercise, have a heart condition or any other health concerns, speak to your GP before starting high-intensity intervals.

Recommended reads

• The best air bikes in the UK
• Assault AirBike Classic review
• Schwinn Airdyne AD8 review
• Strongology Titanium air bike review
• All our exercise bike reviews and guides