Exercise Bikes Buying Guide

Exercise bike is extremely popular among home exercising equipment. These portable light equipments give you a good aerobic workout, burning fat and toning the body. There are so many models and types of exercise bikes available that it has become a challenging task to really make the right choice. So going through an exercise bike buying guide will help you in acquiring enough knowledge to make the rightful decision so that you can get the very best equipment, appropriate to meet your needs.

Types Of Exercise Bike

You must be certain of your individual preferences, before looking around the different models. An exercise bike buying guide classifies exercise bikes basically into two categories:

• Upright exercise bike is the traditional exercise bike where there is an upright seat. It can be uncomfortable even with padded seats and can cause discomfort to the back sometimes, yet allows freedom to perform different routines, particularly difficult ones. There are also dual action exercise bikes that have movable handlebars to give good workout for the arms and the upper body.
• Recumbent exercise bike is the laid back exercise bike equipped with the comfortable seating chair. Using this bike, the workout will be less intense, more relaxed and comfortable, especially for the back and bottom. It doesn’t give much workout for your arms, but good for people with back pain and not much familiar with riding bikes. There are semi-recumbent exercise bikes that give a mixture of the advantages of these types, offering comfort and the intensity level greater than recumbent bikes, but lower than upright bikes.

Different Price Ranges

Another deciding factor is your budget. From which price range you want your exercise bike, must be decided from the three price classifications of:

• Under $500
• Between $500 and $1000
• Above $1000.

The price range you select will decide the features available in the chosen exercise bike. You can get an exercise bike under $500, suitable for less robust workouts, if you are not a regular exerciser or if you are limited by budget constraints. But there are used or reconditioned exercise bike if you need a good exercise bike with many features, suitable to the lower budget. Above $500 and below $1000, you can get a strong, high quality bike with different features like consoles of higher degree giving you different feedbacks of the workouts and different levels of magnetic resistance, monitors for measuring heart rate, different workout options including preprogrammed workouts, interactive music player and iFit compatibility. Above $1000, you can get really superb advanced home exercise bike or a commercial grade bike suitable for use in a gym. You will get features in exercise bikes depending on their price.

It is also possible to classify exercise bikes on the basis of the resistance like

• Direct tension exercise bikes needing adjustment of resistance, manually.
• Air resistance bikes involve pedaling in the face of airflow from the fan blade.
• Magnetic resistance is most advanced type of resistance with magnetic currents for keeping track of resistance and usually has different levels of workout.