One of the most popular trends in fitness today is indoor cycling. Indoor Cycling is when you sit on a stationary bicycle and pedal as hard as you can so you can make your heart go up and burn fat. If you ask me, this concept isn’t really new.

In fact, this has existed long before my fitness days. If you go around Sydney’s older gyms, you will definitely see a stationary bike near the treadmills.

A Crash Course on Indoor Cycling

Nobody knows for sure where and when indoor cycling started. Stationary bicycles have been in gyms for as long as I can remember, but the modern definition of indoor cycling has changed the way people understand it.

Today, indoor cycling is the same as spinning. This refers to an organized kind of exercise where a group of people sit on stationary bikes and they pedal depending on the instruction of their facilitator.

The facilitator should be a fitness instructor since he will be dictating when and for how long the people will be pedaling.

To paint you a picture, a spinning class usually has a mirror in front. You sit on one of the stationary bikes and when the upbeat music plays, you pedal as fast as you can.

Some instructors give you a scenario to motivate you to pedal faster. There’s also a downtime wherein the instructor will play a slower beat and you bike leisurely as if you’re in a park.

Benefits of Indoor Cycling

A spinning class won’t be popular if it didn’t give you a set of benefits. In my case, I was convinced to take a few classes because I was driven to burn the extra calories.

Indoor cycling helps build muscle, especially in your legs. It strengthens your core and your legs because you are encouraged to pedal until the song finishes.

This also builds endurance in the long run. But as I have said earlier, indoor cycling also burns calories. One 30-minute session can actually burn at least 420 calories. This beats jogging for the same amount of time.

Indoor Cycling in My Home

So everything seems to be good – indoor cycling is popular and beneficial. However, for people who usually work the whole day, it’s barely a motivation to spend another half an hour to go to a spinning class and get tired.

If you’re like me, then you probably want to do this at home. That is why I got an exercise bike for myself.

When I was first canvasing for indoor bikes, I had no idea what to buy simply because I didn’t know what makes a good exercise bike. My advice for any newbie there is to do their research first before going to a store and buy the first good-looking stationary bike you see.

One of the few things you should look for is the resistance levels. Ideally, the bike you’ll get should have more than 8 resistance levels because most people think that 8 does not get more calories burned.

Besides, the more levels, the better you can customize your exercise depending on your need. Another thing to look at is the sturdiness of the indoor bicycle. The best way to test this out is to actually sit on the model.

By sitting on it, you will have a feel of how comfortable it is and how sturdy it is. If it wobbles softly, look for something else. You can’t risk toppling over.

Lastly, although this is my personal preference, is that it can be folded. I don’t have enough space at my home so I would like to be able to set up and remove my indoor bicycle if I’m not going to use it.