The 7 Best Assault Bike Workouts To Build Your Engine

The assault bike, also known as the devil’s tricycle, is one of the most potent equipment you will find in the gym. It is a beautifully designed training tool that allows you to train various qualities. 

You could sit back and spin on the assault bike at a steady pace to build your aerobic capacity or crank up the heart rate and dip into the anaerobic energy system during some high-intensity workouts. You could even mix it as a full-body workout with gymnastic movements or weight training. The world is your oyster when designing assault bike workouts for any fitness level. 

But if your goal is to improve your performance on the assault bike, then you need to consider more variables than simply pushing the pace and suffering for several seconds of hard work. These are my top workouts and best practices for designing your training sessions to build your fitness and achieve your specific goals. 

Most of the clients I have worked with as a Performance Physical Therapist and CrossFit coach despise the assault bike because they did not have a good training experience the first time they were on it. This is typical because they only trained on the bike the best way once we began working together. 

This article will explore the seven best assault bike workouts to increase your performance. Next time you’re in the gym, this workout can be your workout of the day.

Each one builds upon the next one in a phase-like structure, so you can improve your performance over time rather than simply suffering on the bike. 

The Best Assault Bike Workouts

Anaerobic Alactic Power

The anaerobic Alactic Power workout is the purest form of a sprint that you can perform. It is an all-out max-effort sprint on the assault bike that quickly depletes the creatine phosphate system and all stored energy throughout the body. 

In this type of workout, the work will typically last for up to ten seconds, whether a sprint for max calories for ten seconds or a distance or number of calories that would last you ten seconds.

Since this workout is so powerful, you will need a lot of rest for the creatine phosphate system to recover and regenerate for the next set. Therefore, you will rest 12- 15 times the work timeframe, thus giving you a total rest time of two to two and a half minutes.

The workout

4 sets: at 100% effort 

10-second sprint 

– rest 2 minutes –

x 4 blocks; 6 minutes of rest between blocks

Anaerobic Alactic Endurance

The anaerobic alactic endurance assault bike workout will aim to push the pace out by several seconds. The word “endurance” suggests that you are now trying to convert the power you developed in the anaerobic alactic power workout into an endurance-based activity. 

But with anaerobic training, you are trying to make an unsustainable activity just a little more sustainable until you are forced to stop. In the anaerobic alactic endurance workout, you will perform a bout of work between ten and twenty seconds. Therefore, the pace will be slightly lower than alactic power but remain quite high. 

Since the effort is high but reduced to the extended time interval, the rest will be a slightly lower ratio than the work being “only” 11x the work interval. 

The workout

3 sets: at 95% effort 

20-second sprint 

– rest 3.5 minutes –

x 3 blocks; 5 minutes of rest between blocks

Anaerobic Lactic Power 1

This workout starts to bridge the gap between high-power work without lactic acid and workouts that begin to produce more lactic acid than can be cleared by the body. Lactic acid is a by-product of anaerobic metabolism. When you move above your lactate threshold long enough, your system cannot clear it faster than you produce, accumulating in the muscle tissue. 

When this happens, you get that burning sensation in your muscles and lungs due to an increase in hydrogen ions. In lactic power 1, the bout of work will be between twenty seconds and forty seconds, with rest times that will be nine times the work interval. 

This lowered rest ratio is because, though the work may seem harder due to the build-up of lactic acid, the power is reduced. Therefore, the central nervous system won’t need as long to recover. 

The workout

3 sets: at 90% effort 

40-second sprint 

– rest 6 minutes –

x 3 blocks; 7 minutes of rest between blocks

Anaerobic Lactic Power 2 

In anaerobic lactic power 2, the work interval extends even further up to a full minute of work, challenging your ability to sustain high power even more. In this workout, the key will be learning to effectively use oxygen during the 7x work-to-rest periods to prepare for the following work bout. 

This sixty-second work window is a common time frame used in assault bike sprints, so you may have tried something similar. But, if you have built up your ability on the bike starting from anaerobic alactic power 1, you will notice that you can sustain much higher efforts than if you just jumped into this workout. 

The workout

3 sets: at 90% effort 

60-second sprint 

– rest 7 minutes –

x 2 blocks; 10 minutes of rest between blocks

Anaerobic Lactic Endurance 1

Anaerobic lactic endurance one now turns the corner again and will start to pull from the aerobic energy system since the work interval extends out between one and two minutes with a rest interval that is six times the work with a pace slightly lower than the previous. 

In this workout, you will begin to train your body’s ability to use lactate as a fuel source since you are working at an unsustainable pace and approaching an aerobic training style.

If you incorporate this workout into your training during either a strength training cycle or an aerobic base-building phase, you should pay close attention to your performance in those areas. High-volume lactic work can negatively impact those qualities. 

The workout

4 sets: at 85% effort 

2-minute sprint 

– rest 12 minutes –

x 2 blocks; 15 minutes of rest between blocks

Anaerobic Lactic Endurance 2

The irony around anaerobic lactic endurance 2 and 1 is that the difference in pace is minimal. When performing this workout on the assault bike, you’ll notice that the pace you are moving at is only a few watts or RPMs less than in the first anaerobic lactic endurance workout. However, though small, it is significant in terms of what it does to the body during the workout. 

A different dose-response takes place as you try to extend the pace on the bike out another full minute. This pertains to how you put up with lactic acid production as you produce power on the bike.

In anaerobic lactic endurance 2, you will work between 2-3 minutes and rest five times during the work interval. Again, this lowered rest ratio is because the power has dropped from the previous workouts. 

The workout

3 sets: at 85% effort 

3-minute sprint 

– rest 15 minutes –

x 2 blocks; 20 minutes of rest between blocks

Anaerobic Lactic Endurance 3

Anaerobic lactic endurance 3 is the final workout in the series. Once you get to this point, you have built the largest foundation possible to allow you to handle work between three and four minutes with only a four-time multiple rest period. In this phase, the amount of lactate production is the highest, and you are putting up with recycling it for energy the longest. 

Compared to anaerobic lactic endurance two and one, your pace in anaerobic lactic endurance three will be slightly less since the interval extends out another minute.

Since the pace has dropped yet again, your work in this workout starts to resemble sustainable aerobic exercise as you move past the anaerobic system. 

The workout

2 sets: at 85% effort 

4-minute sprint 

– rest 16 minutes –

x 2 blocks; 30 minutes of rest between blocks

How To Approach These Workouts

These seven assault bike workouts are a great option if you want to hit some hard intervals during your training program. But there are some key things to consider before you start them. 

Pacing

The first one is that these workouts will move you through the body’s phosphagen and glycolytic energy systems. Both are in the anaerobic energy system realm and need to be paced accordingly. You’ll notice that the pace decreases with each workout because the time frame gets longer. 

But make no mistake, these intervals must be done with maximum effort. If the workout calls for ten seconds of work and you feel that you could have done eleven seconds, you did it wrong. 

Rest Times

Next, you’ll notice that the seconds of rest you get between repetitions are considerably longer than you may see in your normal routine. That is because of the pace required for these intervals to be effective workouts. If you finish your repetition and you feel the rest period is too long, you either did not go hard enough or you are not yet strong enough to achieve a high enough power output on the bike. 

Progression

It can be tempting to jump into these workouts at the later phases, but I can assure you that that is a one-way ticket to subpar progress on the assault bike.

Although each of these workouts is great in its own right, they build on top of each other and are meant to be done in sequential order as you develop your ability to produce power and then sustain high-power efforts as you get better at putting up with lactic acid. 

If you ignore this fact and do the longer intervals first, you won’t have the prerequisites built up to adapt to the work most effectively. Always start with anaerobic alactic power and progress down the line. 

What Is The Lactate Threshold?

The lactate threshold is a critical concept in exercise physiology. It refers to the intensity of exercise at which lactate accumulates in the blood faster than it can be cleared. The body’s ability to produce and clear lactate is balanced at this threshold. Beyond this point, lactate levels rise exponentially, leading to fatigue and eventual exhaustion.

Training at or near the lactate threshold benefits athletes aiming to improve endurance performance. Regularly training at or above this intensity can increase your lactate threshold, allowing you to sustain higher exercise intensities for longer durations before reaching fatigue. This improvement occurs due to adaptations in the body’s ability to buffer and remove lactate.

Alactic vs Lactic 

You may be wondering what I mean by the terms alactic and lactic. These terms refer to whether or not the work that you are doing involves the presence of lactic acid in the major muscle groups that are working. In the assault bike case, this would be the quadriceps and glutes for the lower body and the shoulders and arms for the upper body. 

During workouts that have a very high power output but are short in duration, such as sprinting, the work you are doing is above your lactate threshold, but it is not long enough to allow for the production of lactic acid. 

In longer and slower workouts, such as traditional cardiovascular endurance training, the workout is longer. Still, the pace you are moving at is not above your lactate threshold; therefore, lactate is cleared faster than it is produced. These two scenarios are considered alactic since they are “without” lactic acid. 

The opposite is true for lactic workouts, where the pace is fast enough to be above the lactate threshold for long enough for lactic acid to accumulate faster than it can be cleared. 

Wrapping Up On Assault Bike Workouts

As you can see, the assault bike can be a great way to introduce high-intensity interval training into your training program. Although the assault bike primarily challenges the quadriceps, glutes, and muscles of the arms, I have found that it can also be an effective tool for training the entire body. 

This is especially true when done in an anaerobic setting, where the effort is super high and you are giving everything you have into each revolution. 

The benefits of a tough assault bike workout program are numerous, ranging from improved exercise performance to weight loss to improved mental toughness. But there is most definitely a right way to use the assault bike so that you not only get a good workout but also make progress in your fitness and performance. 

You will see much more progress in your fitness if you follow my outlined progression and adhere to the critical considerations for assault bike workouts. 

I have used these workouts with many of my 1:1 Pain-Free Performance Program clients who wish to take their training to the next level. They all follow the same progression and continue to see excellent results each time. 

If you’d like to learn more about how I can help you reach a new level of fitness and avoid training injuries, then I invite you to book a free consultation. I will learn more about your goals and show you how I can help you reach them faster, as I have done for the hundreds of clients I have worked with thus far.

Book your free consultation HERE. I look forward to chatting with you!