I Gave This Assault Bike Workout My All—Can You Beat My Time?

Anyone who’s jumped on an air bike and put the pedal to the metal will know this cardio machine is a nasty piece of work. It batters your arms, legs and lungs—leaving you feeling like a lactic-filled sack.

If you’re the sort of person still reading after that intro, I’ve got something for you: a brutal air bike workout that takes five minutes.

I stumbled across it in the Assault Fitness newsletter and couldn’t resist trying it. It promptly reduced me to a jelly-legged mess, so I thought I’d pop it here for Coach readers to try too. Sharing is caring, after all.

How To Do Assault Fitness’ Air Bike Workout

For time (as fast as possible):

• Air bike x 21 calories
• Burpee x 9
• Air bike x 15 calories
• Burpee x 15
• Air bike x 9 calories
• Burpee x 21

This is a twist on the popular 21-15-9 CrossFit workout format. Instead of doing descending reps for both exercises, the burpees start at nine and finish at 21 and the air bike calories start at 21 and finish at nine.

The aim is to finish it as fast as possible—all gas, no brakes.

What Happened When I Tried This Air Bike Workout

“You looked like you were in pain,” a fellow gym-goer told me after I finished this workout. I laughed. I was in pain.

It all started so promisingly too. I put the hammer down to try and race through the opening 21 calories on the bike and the first 10 calories flew by. Say what you want about an Assault Bike, if you give it your all the calories tick up quickly.

Then things started to slow down. My heart rate spiked, my quads started to feel heavy and I found it increasingly hard to generate power through the pedals. The air bike’s monitor told the story, with my RPM plummeting and the calories creeping up in 0.2 increments towards the end of the set.

I eventually made it to 21, dismounted and cranked through the burpees. My speed isn’t amazing on burpees but I can keep going—fall down, get up, small jump, repeat.

Then it was back to the bike. As is always the case for an average athlete like me, the 21-15-9 format is too long to sprint and too short to relax into.

So, rather than going full send as I did at the beginning, I found a maximum sustainable pace for the remaining two rounds, settling in at roughly 65-70 RPM, before pushing hard on the last set of 21 burpees.

I finished in 5min 13sec, shy of my sub-five target, then crawled off to a quiet corner to recover.

Next time, I’d try to hold a consistent pace rather than sprinting straight out the gate. By doing this, I could avoid taking myself to exhaustion then slowing considerably, and hold a higher average speed throughout the workout to achieve a faster time.