I recently picked up the beastly exercise bike Schwinn IC4, goals were to buy something durable and smooth. So far this thing looks to be pretty good, the hardest thing about the bike was taking it out of the box due to its weight and being my first time. If I had to do it again I’d lay it down on side and cut open the bottom and then stand it up and pull the box upward and off, the styrofoam it’s packed in is super tight.
I have a mountain bike but have not been riding it much due to worrying about the way people drive distracted, then a recent physical at the doctors office had me nervous as usual. Before this last physical I was a bit prepared but a key moment was me going into a weight room and riding a recumbent exercise bike. Ended up riding 10 miles in about 43 minutes on a low to moderate hill program, drenched in sweat. The real key point was now being so old exactly middle aged this workout really jump started pretty much everything, my legs were feeling way better.
A couple month before my physical I had been doing a self made kettlebell swing routine increasing in reps every week, this is a solid workout but the exercise bike really took it to another level. For nearly a week I felt so energized and knew I had to get an exercise bike asap, obsessing about it for a couple weeks I finally found the IC4 in stock someplace and picked it up.
I had already watched videos on how to set it up out of the box so it was super simple taking about 20-30 minutes, all tools needed are included in the box.. This bike in the box weighs 106 pounds so the thing basically roots itself on the floor when it’s put together, you can’t hear it when pedaling due to being magnetic resistance. I played around with it using a few apps and decided to try JRNY app that is mentioned in included bike material, this one seemed more reasonable on pricing after a free trial is done.
A Bluetooth pulse band is included which worked easily with the default simple computer, you can just ride this bike with no computer at all using the manual resistance knob which is old school cool. Using my iPad I ran the JRNY app and thats when you get the fancy read outs with video workout or scenery, I did 3 workouts using the stock computer then my last was using the JRNY app and it was definitely the better workout due to following along. A cool feature is how the bike works with many different apps even Pelaton and Zwift which I haven’t tried work with this, lots of bikes are locking into a specific app.
So 4 small workouts during its first day all being just short of an hour which is not to shabby, I was using low resistance 15-25 out of the max of 100. My only complaints are the seat which is a typical thing when you haven’t ridden a bike in awhile hurts your ass, and I wish it was a tad lighter. Anyway I plan to keep using this thing which will be nice when the snow comes down, more on this later but a really nice piece of equipment.
Update tried the Zwift app and had no idea of multi rider gaming exercise, truly amazing way to ride with others online safely,
Update JRNY app workouts you have adaptive or ones with a trainer, I am preferring the adaptive versions. What happens is you do a shorter workout to start and how well you do plus your input from a couple selected answers after each workout will help create the next adaptive workout. So basically adaptive workouts are progressions, I also like the target rpm range area that appears on a speedometer to show where you should be rpm wise. I notice if you are pedaling fast you may be spinning too much, turn up the resistance a tiny bit to hit the right rpm range with more power, you’ll notice the burn rate increase too. Burn rate is an estimate of calories burned per minute, I’m hitting about 7-11 burn rate, average is 8 with resistance settings usually around 5-15.
Another cool feature of JRNY is the ‘explore the world’ feature, with these you can ride bike while seeing various locations in the world on a bike pov. Some thing I haven’t used yet but will try it soon. My trend so far is to do JRNY adaptive workout for 20-30 minutes and rest, then later in day jump on Zwift and actually take it easy until I get into doing those workout. Right now JRNY is serious Zwift is play time exercise.
