Cardio · Machine

Air bike

A bike with a big fan for a front wheel and handles that move with the pedals, so your arms push and pull while your legs turn. There is no resistance knob. The fan pushes back harder the faster you spin it, so the machine is exactly as hard as you make it, and it is very easy to make it very hard.

Measured

Minutes

Loading

None

Ways to use it

Steady, intervals

Counts toward

No muscle's weekly sets

How to do it

1. Set the seat at hip height

   Stand beside the bike and set the seat level with the bony point at the side of your hip, the same way you would set any indoor bike. Sitting on it, your knee should still be a little bent with the pedal at the bottom.

2. Feet on the pedals, hands on the handles

   Sit tall, take the moving handles in a relaxed grip, and put the ball of each foot on the pedals. Most air bikes have foot pegs on the front for resting your feet when you only want to use your arms.

3. Start slowly, legs first

   Turn the pedals gently and let the fan come up to speed. Then let your arms join in, pushing and pulling the handles in time with your legs.

4. Keep it smooth and even

   Arms and legs in one rhythm, back tall, shoulders relaxed. A steady ride sounds steady: the fan's note stays the same.

5. Let your breathing set the effort

   For a steady ride you should be able to talk but not sing¹. Because the fan answers every extra push, a steady ride drifts into a hard one without you meaning it to, so listen to your breathing more often than you would on a normal bike.

6. Ease off before you stop

   Slow the pedals over the last minute and let the fan spin down before you step off.

The two ways

Steady

An even effort at a pace you could talk through. This is how to start. Reckoner never places the stair climber and the air bike in your plan, so using one is always your own choice.

Intervals

Harder spells with easy spells between, which is what the air bike is best known for. Because the fan rewards every extra push, a hard spell climbs fast, so make the easy spells long enough to get your breathing back.

How to start easy

Five minutes, steady, at a fan note you could hold for a long while. Learn to keep the effort level before you try intervals, and when you do, start with a few short ones. "Start low and go slow" is how the US physical activity guidelines put it¹.

What goes wrong

• Starting a steady ride too hard

  The first minute feels easy because the fan is still spinning up, so people push harder, and five minutes later they are far past easy. Start slower than you think and hold it.

• All arms or all legs

  Letting the arms do the work, or letting them hang on the handles while the legs do everything, makes the ride lopsided. Use both in one rhythm, or rest your feet on the pegs or your hands on your thighs on purpose.

• The seat set for somebody else

  A low seat bends the knees deeply on every stroke, just as on any bike. Set it at hip height every time.

• Comparing watts with another bike

  The watts and calories on an air bike are its own numbers. Compare a session with your last one on the same machine, never with a different bike.

Questions people ask

Other machines

Sources

1. Piercy, Troiano, Ballard and colleagues, JAMA, 2018. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans the talk test and "start low and go slow"
2. Ponce-García, Benítez-Porres, García-Romero and colleagues, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021. The anaerobic power assessment in CrossFit athletes: an agreement study nineteen CrossFit athletes; peak power from a 30 second Assault Bike test overestimated the Wingate test on a cycle ergometer by 463.58 W on average, and it was the only field test with a significant proportional error
3. Concept2, 2026. Damper setting 101 an air resistance machine's resistance comes from the spinning flywheel moving air, so the faster the wheel spins the more resistance there is, and effort is set by how hard you push