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What are the benefits of using an upright exercise bike?

Low impact exercise – Your body weight and joints are supported when using an upright exercise bike so your exercise routine will be low impact resulting in few injuries and long term damage to hips, knees and ankle joints compared to running.

Great workout for the heart – An upright exercise bike is great for getting your heart rate up over the 100 beats per minute mark and into the fat burning territory for extended periods of time. It doesn’t take long for a regular routine to develop your heart strength so much so that you have to move up the resistance levels.

Easy to motivate for use/can see goals reached easily – because you can use indoors and because using an upright is very effective at improving your heart fitness it doesn’t take long to see personal improvements in your stamina, strength and ultimately body tone. Seeing regular improvements is a great way to keep motivation high.

Helps burn loads of calories as you can maintain routine easier than other machines – Other machines such as ellipticals and steppers may burn more calories per hour, but staying motivated over the long term is harder because the effort is far more physical than using an upright. With an upright fitness sneaks up on you without you feeling like you are putting massive workouts in.

What Are They?

As the name suggests a foldable exercise bike is a bike designed purely for indoor exercise that will fold down for storage. These bikes have no wheels and generally minimal framing for easy folding, but are great for low impact cardio vascular workouts.

What Types Of Foldable Exercise Bikes Are Available?

You will find two major types of folding exercise bike on the market right now, these are the upright and the recumbent bike. Folding upright’s are similar to standard upright exercise bikes but framing is lightweight and hinged for storage in a closet. Recumbents are bikes that generally don’t have forward mounted handlebars, have generous seats and the peddle assembly is mounted forward of the cyclist rather than below. The key characteristic of recumbents is that the user can operate the bike “hands free” if wanted.

What Type Of User Can Benefit From A Folding Fitness Bike?

Clearly folding bikes are great for users who are short on space and need exercise equipment that can be put away in a closet after use if required. Most standard exercise bikes are relatively heavy and occupy a useful size floor plan and if you are not dedicated to ongoing permanent use these bikes can turn into clothes hangers.

What Are They?

A mini exercise bike is essentially an exercise bike that is missing the seating and handlebar arrangement that a normal exercise bike would usually have. In most cases the bike won’t have any wheel it will just be a set of pedals on a basic frame. This is especially true of the hydraulic mini exercise bikes, however you can also get motorized and magnetic eddy versions of these bikes which have the same characteristics with regard to seating and handelbars but have more complex pedal arrangements due to the way friction for resistance is generated. You are intended to provide your own chair when using these bikes so in effect can be as comforatble as you like.

What Type Of User Benefits From These Bikes?

These bikes tend to be marketed as exercise machines for seniors, for fitness beginners, for people who are short on space or who don’t find traditional exercise equipment to be comfortable to use and for those who want a portable piece of equipment that can be used under a desk whilst continuing to work uninterrupted.