30 FREE assault bike workouts for fat loss

I’ve been using a Rogue Echo airbike as my ‘go to’ for cardio since June 2018. In that time I’ve dropped roughly 45lbs of (mostly) fat through a mixture of increasing my cardio training on my assault bike, and cleaning up my diet a bit (which I can get into in another post!)

What people REALLY want to know is if an assault or similar stationary bike good for burning belly fat? I can answer emphatically YES it is, as along with 45lbs of weight loss I also dropped almost 8” from my waist measurement.

Here are some cool workouts you can use to get started.

What is an ‘assault bike’?

An assault bike is the modern take on the traditional air bike that has been around for decades. If you’ve ever seen an old Airdyne kicking around then you know what an assault bike is!

Don’t be fooled by the black paint job and groovy names (e.g. the Rogue Echo bike), ultimately assault bikes are similar in operation to these old school machines. 

Where they do differ is in build quality and purpose. Traditional fan bikes were for light intensity workouts and rehabilitation work – the new wave of Echo & assault bikes are much bulkier and are built for high intensity workouts. This means they can take a ton of punishment day in day out without breaking!

What are they exactly? Well in essence you use a pedal box like a typical bicycle and your pedals drive a large fan at the front. Instead of a static handlebar there are two large handles that you can push & pull on that also connect to the drivetrain. 

This has the impact of making the assault bike a full body cardio workout as you pump with your arms as well as cycling with your legs. 

A pretty cool feature of a fan bike over a typical stationary bike is the lack of gearing. The fan spinning provides the resistance – the harder you spin it, the tougher it gets. No distractions or strategies to game it. Just simple, old fashioned hard work.

Are exercise bikes good for burning fat?

All cardio activity is good for burning fat if administered properly, in combination with a sensible diet. Exercise bikes are therefore great for fat burning!

I like to mix in light intensity steady state (LISS) and high intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts into my regular exercise schedule. I find a mix of both types works well for general fitness, but I have found I lose more weight when I am doing more frequent HIIT workouts.

For example if I hit a weight loss plateau I will often swap in a HIIT session on the Rogue Echo bike to kick start my progress again.

The downside? I find multiple HIIT sessions a week alongside a regular weight training regime and a calorie deficit diet quite intense for prolonged periods. After a couple of weeks I tend to let one of these give way slightly – often swapping the HIIT back to LISS. Until the next plateau that is…

Virtually everything you do will burn calories – but the assault bike seems to be a super time-efficient way to keep the burn rate up.

Can stationary bikes help me lose belly fat?

Stationary bikes CAN help you lose belly fat by helping burn calories and ultimately creating a weight loss scenario (food intake – exercise = net negative).

BUT targeted or ‘spot’ fat loss is NOT a thing, so you can’t jump on an exercise bike and lose weight exclusively from a big beer belly unfortunately.

So we need to use our cardio workouts as part of an overall strategy to drop weight through a calorie deficit (calories in < calories out.)

When you’re new to something you will see a great initial surge of beginner gains – assault bikes are no different. The best time to start training was 10 years ago, the second best time is today 🙂

If you jump on the bike and get started with one of these workouts you will quickly be able to see if it helps you reach your goals. If not we can revisit the rest of the equation (mainly diet!)

30 fat burning assault bike workouts

Here are 30 awesome fat burning workouts you can get started with on your Echo or assault bike. Kick start your weight loss journey with one of these:

1. 7 rounds of 20 seconds on / 1:40 off
2. 6 rounds of 90 seconds on / 1:30 off
3. 5 rounds of 30 cals; 2 minutes rest between rounds
4. Maximum calories in 10 minutes, 10 minutes rest, then repeat number of calories again in shortest time you can
5. 10 rounds of 35 calories; Rest duration 1:1 with interval duration
6. Maximum distance in 20 minutes
7. 20 rounds of 15 seconds on / 15 seconds off
8. 5 rounds of 60 seconds on / 60 seconds off
9. 10km distance in as little time as possible
10. 50 – 40 – 30 – 20 – 10 calories; 4 minutes rest between each
11. 5 rounds of 2km with 4 minutes rest between sets
12. 100 calories as quickly as possible
13. Maximum calories in 60 minutes (good luck!)
14. Maximum calories in 12 / 8 / 4 / 1 minute with 2 / 4 / 6 minutes rest between sets
15. Maximum calories in 5km
16. 6 rounds of 33 calories; 3 minutes rest between sets
17. 20 minutes for maximum calories, sprint the last 10 seconds of every minute
18. 5 rounds of 1 minute maximum calories with 5 minutes rest
19. 10km distance as quickly as possible
20. 14 rounds of 20 calories on every second minute
21. 10 seconds on / 20 seconds off; Repeat until 200 calories burnt
22. Maximum calories in 5 minutes 
23. 12 rounds of 3 minutes on / 2 minutes off
24. 4 rounds of 40 calories; 4 minutes rest between sets
25. 10 rounds of 20 calories; Rest 1:1 with work time
26. Maximum calories in 6 minutes; Rest 6 minutes, then repeat;
27. 7 rounds of 1km distance; 2 minutes rest
28. 7 calories on the minute, each minute, for 7 rounds
29. 10 rounds of 10 seconds on / 10 second off
30. 8 rounds of 30 seconds on; 30 seconds off; Rest 4 minutes then repeat

If you’re new to exercise then you should build up to these slowly. Start with around half the number of rounds and build up over a couple of weeks.

How I used my Rogue Echo bike for weight loss: 45lbs of fat DROPPED

As covered above you simply CANNOT target belly or any other specific deposit of fat to lose. So what does that mean? Well we simply must aim to burn as many calories as possible if we are looking for the MOST bang for our cardio BUCK!

Like many I enjoy lifting, but have a love/hate relationship with cardio. This means when it is cardio time I want something that burns as many calories as feasible, in as little time as possible, doing something I enjoy as much as possible. This is a tough ask!

Ultimately I found VARIETY helped – I rotated a few of the 30 workouts above around week to week doing 1x session of HIIT a week with a second, lighter intensity LISS session. Both of these were done on a Rogue Echo bike with the aim of losing weight.

This combination of HIIT and LISS seemed to annihilate the fat I was carrying – a judicious approach to calories no doubt helped, but I was pushing myself on the Echo too and I credit both with being crucial to help me lose 45lbs of fat!

Would 100% HIIT be better for fat loss compared to LISS? Maybe, maybe not. I found doing multiple sessions of HIIT a week to be less efficient as I carried a bit more soreness week-to-week and found myself hitting a recovery wall more regularly. 1x HIIT and 1x LISS was quite easy to comply with and delivered the desired results by allowing me to use my Rogue Echo bike for weight loss, helping to justify the purchase!

Final thoughts

An assault bike is a great way to hammer in some serious cardio sessions burning a ton of calories and fat. Of course the amount you burn will depend on how long you spend on it, and how hard you push!

I would honestly say my airbike is one of the best pieces of home gym equipment that I have for cardio – so easy to use, incite resistance without any hassle fiddling around with gears and great transfer over to cycling – another hobby of mine.