A short instructional video describing how to use a recumbent bicycle in hotel gyms. The speaker emphasizes maintaining a high cadence (RPM) over high pedal force, provides a specific interval workout (10×2-minute efforts at 90–100 RPM), and gives setup tips (seat adjustment to ~30° knee bend) and practical travel-related advice.
Ah, the recumbent bicycle. A thing of beauty found in most hotel gyms and equipped with a control panel full of fancy workout choices for you. And if you're very lucky in staying in a very posh hotel, a computer or television screen to manage your workouts or entertain you. So here's the skinny on the recumbent bicycle. Basically, it's very, very simple to create a force against pedals because you're in a seated position similar to a leg press. So if you were going to choose between creating a lot of force or pedaling at a very high cadence, you should choose the pedaling at a very high cadence, because, like I said, it's very easy to produce a force on that recumbent bicycle. Now, one of the things that I want to point out to you when you're on this is, first of all, make sure that your leg is bent at about 30 degrees so you're not too close or too far from those pedals. And for most recumbent bicycles, the adjustment for that is directly underneath the seat. Second, make sure that you've got the television on because these things are nauseatingly boring. Third, check out your RPM tab right there. You're going to want to be very familiar with that one because that is the one that's going to come in handy for the workout that I'm about to explain to you. That's very effective on one of these recumbent bicycles. So here's what you can do on a recumbent bicycle to keep yourself in good cycling shape and burn a lot of calories. Cadence is king, RPM is king. You need to maintain a high RPM on these things in order for them to be effective because once again, you're tired of me saying this. Yet it's easy to produce a lot of force on a recumbent bicycle because you're sitting down. So the cadence, the workout that involves a high cadence, what you can do. This is one of my favorite workouts to do on a recumbent bicycle is 10 sets of two minutes. That's a 20 minute workout, or 20 minutes of actual hard working out. 10 sets of two minutes at 90 to 100 RPM on the recumbent bicycle. That's a pretty fast pedaling rate. And you split each of those two minute efforts up by 30 seconds, one minute or two minutes, depending on your level of fitness and the time that you have available to workout. Okay, so it's 10 by 2 minute efforts, looking at the RPM right there on the screen and trying to get that to be at 90-100 RPM. My final word of warning to you on the recumbent bicycle is you're sitting down on it. And if you're traveling, a lot of times you're sitting down in a taxi cab, in a bus, in a car, on a subway, on a plane. And my question for you is, how much time do you actually actually wants to spend sitting down? More so with the recumbent bicycle, I encourage people who are trying to get in cycling shape, like you triathletes out there, or cyclists, to use it if you don't have any other option for a bicycle while you're on the road, while you're traveling. But if you have other options available to you, like some of the things you may see in this series of videos on the hotel gym, then you may want to take advantage of some of those other pieces of equipment.
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