Let’s be honest: A long, steady ride on an indoor cycling bike can drag on and on. HIIT cycling workouts, on the other hand, can make the time fly as you challenge your body and mind with various effort levels, work intervals, and recovery breaks.
Generally speaking, HIIT, or high-intensity interval training, refers to repeated sets of intervals that are between five seconds and a minute long, with a relatively short rest period. Cycling coach and certified personal trainer Marissa Axell tells SELF that while she tends to prescribe a 2:1 work-time-to-recovery-time ratio for her athletes, there are still plenty of benefits to longer rest intervals, especially for more gen-pop exercisers.
As SELF reported previously, HIIT is a type of anaerobic exercise, meaning it doesn’t rely on oxygen to produce the energy your body needs for your workout. Instead, it taps into your fast-acting energy pathways to produce it, which allow you to go hard—just not for an extended period of time. With HIIT, there’s a big focus on intensity, so it’s not surprising that a bunch of its benefits are related to power, speed, and explosiveness.
“HIIT improves your VO2 max—the rate at which your body processes oxygen, a huge indicator of fitness—your anaerobic capacity, your neuromuscular power, and your sprint,” Peloton cycling instructor and world-champion track racer Christine D’Ercole tells SELF. “Even if you’re not a [competitive] cyclist, they’re fun because they make you focus on very short durations of time, so they’re incredibly engaging.”
That’s why many popular fitness apps, like Peloton and iFit, use HIIT-based protocols in their classes, which can be a great introduction to these kinds of workouts. But a neat thing about HIIT is that it really lends itself to self-directed workouts, too, which can be a boon for when you want to cut down on screen time during your session, or just want to personalize your routine to what your body is looking for on that particular day. After all, a self-directed workout leaves room for you to shorten or lengthen your ride and efforts based on your needs and energy levels at that time.
Sometimes, though, you want some guidance on that indoor cycling bike, especially if you’re new to that particular piece of equipment, or had only previously cycled in fitness classes or through apps. As a former certified cycling instructor, I always incorporated high-intensity intervals into every class I taught because they are engaging, effective, and honestly pretty fun. Here, six HIIT cycling workouts you can try on your indoor bike that’ll make the time fly.
1. A solid warm-up
Before starting your intervals, warming up with at least five to 10 minutes of easier cycling can gradually elevate your heart rate and get the blood flowing to your muscles. This warm-up takes less than 15 minutes, and is similar to the one D’Ercole uses for her Peloton classes. It allows your body to ease into the intensity, and primes your heart and lungs for upcoming hard efforts.
In this warm-up—and in other indoor cycling workouts—you’ll use your rating of perceived exertion (RPE) to help you determine whether you should push harder, scale back, or stay as you are. With the RPE scale of 1 to 10, 1 is the lowest (very light intensity) while 10 is your absolute max effort. You’ll also see resistance levels denoted, which indicate how much the bike is resisting your feet as you pedal, simulating changes in outdoor terrain. Generally speaking, low resistance feels like you’re riding downhill, moderate resistance feels like you are pedaling on flat terrain or a slight hill, and high resistance should feel like you are riding up a big, steep hill. Your RPE will depend on both the resistance you choose and your cadence, or how quickly you are pedaling (the number of revolutions per minute).
- 3-5 minutes of easy pedaling at an effort level or 4 or less
- 30 seconds of fast pedaling (90+ revolutions per minute, or rpm) at a low resistance
- 30 seconds of easy pedaling
- 30 seconds of fast pedaling (90+ rpm) at a low resistance
- 30 seconds easy pedaling
- 30 seconds of fast pedaling (90+ rpm) at a low resistance
- 1 minute of easy pedaling
- 1 minute at an effort level of 5 out of 10 with moderate resistance
- 1 minute at an effort level of 6 out of 10 with moderate resistance
- 1 minute at an effort level of 7 out of 10 with high resistance
- 1 minute at an effort level of 8 out of 10 with high resistance
- Pedal easy as long as it takes for you to catch your breath.
2. Fast-pedaling drill
This workout gets your heart rate up aerobically, without putting a large strain on your muscles or joints. The key? Light resistance. Whenever you ride a workout with fast-cadence sections, it’s important to have light resistance, but “not so light that you’re bouncing in the seat,” Clyde Simms, owner and instructor at Rev’d Indoor Cycling studios in Boston, tells SELF. To help guide you, choose a song with a steady tempo that’s easy to pedal along with at about a 6 out of 10 effort.
“Give yourself just enough resistance to maintain the tempo,” says Simms. From there, complete three to four sets of these short spin-ups.
- Ride at song tempo (70-90 rpm)
- 30 seconds fast-cadence pedaling (90+ rpm)
- 30 seconds back into pedaling on the rhythm
- 30 seconds fast-cadence pedaling
- 30 seconds back into pedaling on the rhythm
- 30 seconds fast-cadence pedaling
- 30 seconds back into pedaling on the rhythm
- Pedal easy for 5 minutes. Repeat two to three times.
3. Track cycling standing starts
D’Ercole likes to bring track-racing-style intervals into her Peloton classes. “Ahead of class, I posted a video of a standing start to create a visual in their head of an actual race,” she says. “They got really into it, and it distracts people from how hard they’re working because it’s fun.” In certain bike races on a velodrome, riders complete a time trial beginning from a standstill on the start line—hence, the standing start. The goal of this exercise is to sprint to your maximum speed as quickly and efficiently as possible, so it really only consists of 15-20 super explosive pedal strokes.
To complete these anaerobic intervals, bring your feet to a full stop parallel to the ground (pedals at 3:00 and 9:00, if the pedal stroke were a clock face), and set your bike to a super high resistance—so hard that you can’t pedal from a seated position. Stand up out of the saddle, and stomp the pedal as hard as you can. Once you get moving, your cadence will increase naturally throughout the duration of these efforts, but because they’re so short, you should be able to stay standing the entire time.
- Bring your feet to parallel and stop, then add high resistance
- 15 seconds pedal stomp at an explosive 10/10 effort
- 45 seconds seated easy spinning/active recovery at a low resistance
- Bring your feet to parallel and stop, then add high resistance
- 15 seconds pedal stomp at an explosive 10/10 effort
- 45 seconds seated easy spinning/active recovery at a low resistance
- Bring your feet to parallel and stop, then add high resistance
- 15 seconds pedal stomp at an explosive 10/10 effort
- Pedal easy for 4 minutes. Repeat up to two more times.
4. Consistent resistance intervals
Make yourself a playlist of upbeat songs with tempos you can comfortably pedal along to. If you want to get really specific, you can use this BPM counter to choose songs in a certain range, or that vary. Choose a target wattage or resistance number on the monitor of your bike that feels like a 10-out-of-10 effort at that cadence. Hold yourself accountable to the rhythm, only increasing and decreasing intensity by adjusting the resistance. This was one of my favorite ways to teach a song in class that didn’t have obvious drops or changes in energy. It’s also a great way to keep yourself engaged when you’re riding alone to a playlist.
- 30 seconds at high resistance, riding to the beat
- 15 seconds at low resistance still riding to the beat
- 30 seconds at high resistance, riding to the beat
- 15 seconds at low resistance still riding to the beat
- 30 seconds at high resistance, riding to the beat
- 15 seconds at low resistance still riding to the beat
- 30 seconds at high resistance, riding to the beat
- 15 seconds at low resistance still riding to the beat
- 5 minutes of easy pedaling/active recovery. Repeat once more.
5. A speed, strength, and power combo
Instead of repeating the same set multiple times, this sequence—a favorite of D’Ercole—focuses on a different metric each round. For the first set, you’ll get your heart rate up with fast cadence work, aiming for the highest rpm you can hit without bouncing in the saddle. For the second, which is focused on strength, you’ll crank the resistance as high as you can without dipping below a cadence of 60 rpms, and focus on really pushing through the full pedal stroke.
The two metrics come together in the final set, where you’ll focus on power—a combo of speed and strength. “You’re not turning the resistance up quite as high as you had for the strength set, or going fast as you did on the speed set, but you’re actually going to produce a lot more power than you did on either of them,” says D’Ercole.
Set 1: Speed
- 30 second speed interval at light resistance (max 120 rpm)
- 30 seconds pedaling easy
- 30 seconds speed interval
- 30 seconds pedaling easy
- 30 seconds speed interval
- Pedal easy for 3 minutes.
Set 2: Resistance
- 30 seconds pedaling at high resistance, low cadence (60-70 rpm)
- 30 seconds pedaling easy
- 30 seconds high resistance, low cadence
- 30 seconds pedaling easy
- 30 seconds high resistance, low cadence
- Pedal easy for 3 minutes.
Set 3: Power
- 30 seconds pedaling at medium-high resistance and medium cadence (90-100 rpm)
- 30 seconds pedaling easy
- 30 seconds pedaling at medium-high resistance and medium cadence
- 30 seconds pedaling easy
- 30 seconds pedaling at medium-high resistance and medium cadence
6. Tabata-style intervals
Tabata-style intervals specifically refer to a 20-second on, 10-second rest pattern. For intervals as brief as these, it’s easier to go by your RPE than any metric your bike measures because there is often a delay in readout, says Axell, who prescribes these intervals to her athletes to help them practice the sudden and frequent sprinting often required in bike races. And instead of giving them a target heart rate zone or resistance number, she simply instructs them to “go breathless” on each effort to give them an easy cue to what an 8, 9, or 10-out-of-10 effort should feel like.
As far as cadence goes for these, a great target is between 80-105 rpms. Throughout each interval, “try to hold a steady cadence while pushing as hard as possible, piling on the resistance,” says Axell. “Usually by the end, you can’t; you’re totally burnt.” This workout, Axell outlines, involves eight repetitions, but if you’re new to Tabata, you can go with fewer reps and work your way up to more as you get more comfortable.
- 20 seconds of hard effort that makes you breathless
- 10 seconds easy pedaling
- Repeat for a total of eight rounds, then pedal easy for 5 minutes. Repeat the entire sequence once more.
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