Whether students use spin bikes in PE classes or as a low-impact cardio workout at home, indoor cycling can be a powerful tool to build leg muscles and improve cardiovascular fitness. But to get the most out of these machines, teachers need to know how to create effective cycling workouts. That’s where these three spinning workouts come in.Learn More

1. Burn It Up

The first of these workouts, designed by Haffner, starts off with a seated warmup cycle for five minutes at your flat road level of effort. From there, you’ll move into a series of short 30-second all-out seated sprints, which are followed by a 30 seconds of cycling at a comfortable pace to recover. Repeat these intervals for two to four rounds, and then follow up with a three-minute cool down. This workout will build three key components all cyclists need to perform their best: cardiovascular endurance, leg strength, and an efficient pedal stroke.

2. Build Endurance

The next workout, also from Haffner, uses a technique called Fartlek training, which mixes HIIT with steady-state cardio. In this 30-minute workout, you’ll alternate all-out sprints with recovery cycles that maintain a prescribed RPE of 3 or 4. RPE is your rate of perceived exertion: A 1 would feel like a walk in the park, while 10 is sprinting so hard you can’t say a word.

By varying your cadence and resistance, you can increase the intensity of these spinning workouts, too. When you increase your cadence, your legs will pump more quickly, while increasing the resistance of the bike will make it harder for your legs to pedal.