Rugby fans and players around the world love this sport for its technical complexity. But there's no denying how much physical preparation matters for every single game.
The best way to stay in rugby shape is to find workouts that test your limits without risking injury. And because rugby works every major muscle group, players are always looking for machines that train the whole body at once.
This is where assault bikes come in. Air bikes aren't new, but they've become a staple of team-sport and combat-sport conditioning thanks to the brutal workouts you can do on them.
What are assault bikes?
You've almost certainly seen one at your gym. An assault bike (also called an air bike or fan bike) looks like a stationary bike, but with a big fan instead of a front wheel and moving handles.
Don't be fooled by how it looks. As soon as you try one, you'll realise you have to pedal while pushing and pulling the handles at the same time, so you're working your whole body on one machine.
And here's what most athletes see as its best feature: the harder or faster you go, the harder it gets. The fan's resistance rises with your effort, so the bike always matches you.
The benefits of assault bike workouts
Assault bikes are simple machines, but you can use them for anything from an easy recovery spin to an all-out session. It depends entirely on the person sitting on it. Here are some of the benefits for rugby training.
It builds aerobic fitness
Aerobic fitness is one of the cornerstones of rugby: it's what lets you recover between efforts and keep working into the last ten minutes. Steady and interval work on the bike strengthens your heart and lungs and delivers more oxygen to your working muscles.
It's a full-body, low-impact workout
Pedalling, pushing and pulling work nearly all of the big muscle groups. Unlike running, there's no impact, so it's kinder on your hips, knees and ankles: useful when you want hard conditioning without more pounding on top of training and matches.
It burns a lot of energy quickly
Because your arms and legs work together, you can burn a lot of calories in a short session, especially with intervals. How many depends hugely on how hard you go. If you're new to the bike, find your pace first, or you'll be out of breath very quickly.
It tests your mental stamina
Plenty of players have the physical tools but struggle when they're hurting late in a game. Hard air bike intervals are a controlled way to practise working through discomfort with little risk of injury.
It's good for rehabilitation
Because it's low-impact and you control the intensity completely, the bike is a common way for injured players to keep their fitness up while they recover, as long as their physio is happy with it.
It keeps you cool
It sounds trivial, but the big fan that provides the resistance also blows a nice draught at you.
Is it safe to use an assault bike?
Air bike workouts are hard, and like any exercise they carry some risk. To avoid injury or getting sick on the bike, start gradually and build up the intensity over a few sessions. If you have a heart condition or any other health concern, check with your doctor before doing high-intensity intervals.
The muscles an assault bike works
An assault bike workout uses almost every muscle you have, including:
- quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves
- hip flexors
- chest, back and lats
- shoulders (deltoids)
- biceps and triceps
- abs and obliques
8 assault bike workouts to boost your performance
Try these workouts to improve your fitness for the rugby pitch. Warm up for five minutes at an easy pace first.
Workout 1: Max calorie burner (21 minutes)
A tough all-round aerobic session.
- 1 minute on, aiming for as many calories as possible
- 2 minutes off (easy pedalling)
- Repeat 7 times
Workout 2: Assault bike Tabata
Tabata intervals are always a good choice, and many air bikes have them pre-programmed.
- 20 seconds all-out
- 10 seconds rest
- Repeat 8 times (4 minutes)
Workout 3: Pyramid intervals
Build up to a 50-second sprint, then work back down.
| Minute | Sprint | Rest |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 seconds | 50 seconds |
| 2 | 20 seconds | 40 seconds |
| 3 | 30 seconds | 30 seconds |
| 4 | 40 seconds | 20 seconds |
| 5 | 50 seconds | 10 seconds |
| 6 | 40 seconds | 20 seconds |
| 7 | 30 seconds | 30 seconds |
| 8 | 20 seconds | 40 seconds |
| 9 | 10 seconds | 50 seconds |
Workout 4: Death by assault bike
Once you've tried it, you'll understand the name. Every minute on the minute:
- Minute 1: 2 calories
- Minute 2: 4 calories
- Minute 3: 6 calories
- Keep adding 2 calories a minute until you can't hit the target within the minute.
Workout 5: Calories and DTs
Combining the bike with weights makes for a seriously tough session. "DT" is a classic barbell complex: 12 deadlifts, 9 hang power cleans and 6 push jerks with the same bar. Choose a light weight you can move well.
- 15 calories on the bike
- 1 unbroken round of DT
- Repeat 5 times
Workout 6: Chase the calories
This one can be moderate or brutal, depending on your pace.
- 30, 25, 20, 15, 10, then 5 calories
- Rest for as long as each effort took (1:1 work to rest)
Workout 7: 10 up assault
Use it as a warm-up, a finisher or, if you really push, a session on its own.
- 10 calories on the bike
- 10 hand-release push-ups
- Repeat 10 times
Workout 8: HIIT finisher (6 minutes)
A great add-on at the end of a gym session.
| Minute | Moderate | Sprint |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 55 seconds | 5 seconds |
| 2 | 54 seconds | 6 seconds |
| 3 | 53 seconds | 7 seconds |
| 4 | 52 seconds | 8 seconds |
| 5 | 51 seconds | 9 seconds |
| 6 | 50 seconds | 10 seconds |
Assault bike workouts for fat loss
No workout lets you spot-reduce fat. But as you burn energy and lose weight, you'll lose fat everywhere, including around your middle.
High-intensity intervals are a time-efficient way to burn energy. A 2011 review by Stephen Boutcher in the Journal of Obesity suggested high-intensity intermittent exercise may reduce body fat, including abdominal fat, more than steady cardio. Later meta-analyses have generally found intervals and steady cardio produce similar fat loss when total effort is matched, with intervals taking less time. Either way, your diet does most of the heavy lifting for fat loss.
How many calories does an assault bike burn?
It depends on your size and how hard you go. Air bikes can burn energy fast because your arms and legs work together, and an all-out sprint can briefly hit very high rates. You'll often see claims of 80 calories a minute online, but don't expect anything like that across a whole session; even well-trained athletes only hold rates like that for seconds.
Short intervals add up, though. In a 2013 study (Sevits and colleagues, Physiological Reports), a single session of five 30-second all-out sprints on a stationary bike, about two and a half minutes of hard work in total, raised participants' total energy expenditure for the day by around 200 calories.
If your goal is losing fat, remember that the calories you burn on the bike are easy to eat straight back. Tracking your intake for a few weeks is the simplest way to see the full picture, and ParrotPal, a UK calorie and protein tracker, makes logging food quick.
Air bikes for conditioning
Air bike intervals are a good way to build aerobic capacity without the impact of running, which is why they're popular for keeping conditioning up during strength-focused training blocks.
Combining resistance and cardio in the same interval session also works. A 2015 study by Falcone and colleagues in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that a combined resistance and aerobic interval session burned more energy than resistance-only or aerobic-only sessions of the same length.
What an 8-week air bike study found
A 2022 study by Schlegel, Křehký and Hiblbauer looked at high-intensity interval training on an air bike.
The setup: young, healthy, physically active adults were randomly split into two groups for eight weeks. The experimental group did two interval sessions a week on an air bike (high-intensity intervals and sprint intervals, with work intervals of 15 to 45 seconds). The control group did two sessions of moderate continuous running instead. Both groups also did one bodyweight session a week (squats, push-ups, lunges, planks, sit-ups and handstand holds).
The results: compared with the running group, the air bike group improved significantly in:
- back squat (8.25%)
- pulling strength (7.07%)
- aerobic endurance (18.74%)
- peak oxygen uptake, VO2 peak (10.62%)
The conclusion: interval training on an air bike improved fitness, aerobic capacity and both upper and lower-body strength over eight weeks, and was more effective than moderate running in the short term. It's a small study, but it supports what most coaches already see: the air bike is an efficient tool for building fitness.
Conditioning for other combat sports
Rugby isn't the only sport that needs this kind of repeated-effort fitness. Wrestlers, judoka and Brazilian jiu-jitsu players face the same pattern of hard scrambles with short recoveries, and air bike intervals are a staple of their conditioning too. If you train both, JitsAI's guide to strength and conditioning for BJJ covers what carries over to the mat, and our grip strength guide adds the grip work.
And you're done. Pick a workout, write down your numbers, and try to beat them next time.
References
- Boutcher SH. High-intensity intermittent exercise and fat loss. Journal of Obesity, 2011: 868305. doi:10.1155/2011/868305
- Sevits KJ et al. Total daily energy expenditure is increased following a single bout of sprint interval training. Physiological Reports, 2013. PubMed 24303194
- Falcone PH et al. Caloric expenditure of aerobic, resistance, or combined high-intensity interval training using a hydraulic resistance system in healthy men. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2015; 29(3): 779 to 785. PubMed 25162652
- Schlegel P, Křehký A, Hiblbauer J. Physical fitness improvement after 8 weeks of high-intensity interval training with air bike. 2022. doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.21669.58081