A Workout Apparatus or Rehabilitation Tool? Your Exercise Bike Can Do Both

Without a doubt, exercise bikes provide a superior cardiovascular workout. Different from other exercising equipment, an exercise bike can easily serve two purposes. It can be used to help rehabilitate an injury by exercising with a low resistance setting, or it's full power can be unleashed to help build strong legs by using a greater amount of resistance.

Exercise bikes can be ideal for people experiencing injuries, or for those who have sensitive joints, which cannot sustain the constant pounding and impact that they may experience from a treadmill or other types of equipment.

If your looking for a great way to exercise without ever leaving the house, then an exercise bike just might be what you're looking for.
Exercise bikes are an excellent way of getting a cardio workout especially when you don't have time or don't feel like going to the gym. Exercise bikes make for a very good workout without the need of having to use many other pieces of gym equipment.

These bikes are also unsurpassed for burning calories, increasing your heart rate and delivering a wonderful aerobic workout. They work on your legs and abdomen and to a certain extent, your upper body.
Stationary exercise bikes help to tone your legs, buttocks and they also give your knees a break from the impact that you may find in other exercises, such as in treadmills.
These bikes are a very popular feature in fitness gyms, but they are also becoming very popular in homes as well.

Also called indoor bikes, stationary bikes and studio bikes, they are also a very good choice for people who are constantly struggling to burn up body fat.

Exercise bikes come in all different shapes and sizes and vary in prices. On average, you may expect to pay between $350 to $700 for a good bike. The price of course, will depend on the type, quality and features that it has to offer, but the rewards can be enormous.
A cheaper alternative would be to shop around for a used unit.

Most all of the exercise bikes available on the market today have a built in control panel, as well as a range of different resistance levels.

Routine bike exercising will put your body into shape by helping to improve on your fitness, your stamina and at the same time, allow you to work on both your upper and lower body.
Although exercise bikes allow you to increase your heart rate at your command, they also allow you to workout at your own pace by increasing or decreasing the resistance levels. The intensity of your workout may depend on your physical condition and also on your particular fitness goals.

Depending on your bike style, most of the resistance settings that you choose are controlled by either fans, gears, belts or flywheels.

Everyone has their own favorite way to exercise that is the most comfortable for them. As an example, some people choose to pedal slowly with a high resistance, while others may choose to pedal fast, with very little resistance. Either way, the difference in resistance levels can be adjusted as you pedal.

There are basically two types of exercise bikes available on the market. The upright and the recumbent bikes.

The upright style is the one that most people identify with.
The upright exercise bikes allow you the same feeling as that of a regular bicycle. With an upright bike, the seat will allow riders to set on it astride (one leg on each side). Active cyclists will often use upright bikes as a warm up.
Another benefit of the upright, is the ability to either stand or sit during your workout.

Some riders have reported experiencing problems with their knees while working out with an upright bike. Others also complained that the seats on an upright are extremely uncomfortable when riding for longer periods of time. Although some claim that you can get use to the discomfort, nonetheless, being uncomfortable can take away all the enjoyment.

The other type of stationary exercise bike is the recumbent bike. Regardless of upright bikes being very good for some people, the recumbent style bikes offer many other benefits which make them more beneficial and popular.

For starters, they come equipped with a bucket seat which is so much more comfortable than the traditional tiny, hard seats that are found on spinning bikes and uprights.
A main feature of some of the recumbent bikes are an LCD display with storage tray readouts. These may include time, calories, heart rate, speed and the distance 'traveled'. Also included, may be the adjustment of incline levels.

By working out on the recumbent, you are seated at a reclined position, which allows you to remove a great deal of pressure off of your back, which is unlike the upright bike.
The recumbent exercise bikes also utilize more of the hamstring than they do of the quadriceps, which is totally opposite of the upright bikes. In addition, they also work on more of the abdominal group than do the uprights.

Recumbent bikes take a great amount of the gravitational pull off of your legs, because your feet are out in front of you, instead of under you as in the upright.
While some thoughts are that recumbent bikes are less intense than uprights, in reality, you can burn up just as many calories on one, as you can the other.

Having experienced both a workout and the many benefits of a recumbent exercise bike, you may never want to go back to working out with an upright bike.
Overall, recumbent exercise bikes are becoming the popular choice of home exercising equipment.