The King of Garage Gym Cardio: Rogue Echo Bike vs C2 BikeErg

This post is a bit of a detour from the recent focus on shooting and pistols. A while back, longer ago than my memory thinks, I wrote up a garage gym compendium. The idea was all the lessons I learned while establishing my home gym, the Arete Forge. I’ve continued to diligently work out at home for five to six days per week, barring any sickness of travel. Among the most interesting things I’ve picked up over time is my selection of cardio equipment. It started with a rowing machine, even before I had a formal gym. Later, during the pandemic, we picked up a Schwinn IC3 spin bike. Then came a Rogue Echo Bike, a myriad of kettlebells, jump ropes, and most recently a C2 BikeErg.

For today, I’m focusing mainly on the Rogue Echo Bike and the C2 BikeErg. These two have several similarities in operation, and they are close enough in price that many people (including me) agonize over which one to get when building out a home gym.

Most of the time, it’s an “I only have space (or funds) for one, so which one should I get?” Luckily, I’m able to house both of them and can now make a fair comparison between them.

The bottom line up front, though, is that both are fantastic tools and you’d be well-served by either one. That said, I think the C2 BikeErg is the better option for most people. I’ll explain why I think this over the course of the article.

“Garage Gym Cardio” Requirements

Look, there are a ton of ways to get your cardio training in. Many of them, like running or burpees, don’t even require equipment. Others, like jump rope and rucking, require minimal equipment and very little space. Yet more, like kettlebells, also take up very little space and offer a hell of a punch when utilized the right way.

The truth is that all of these methods are good and have validity. In fact, I often cycle through them throughout the year as additional work. For example, I love kettlebell snatches and complexes. You get the bonus of strength work while also building your cardio engine. But they have a downside, and this also applies to other methods as well.

Impact Issues

The first qualification for “ultimate garage gym equipment” comes down to how joint friendly the method is. Running and jump rope are fantastic ways to get in work, but have the very notable downside of impact on the knees and hips. This might not be an issue all of the time, but if I’ve been beating myself up under the barbell with squats, deadlifts, and presses, the prospect of then hammering my knees and hips with repeated impact isn’t all that appealing.

Furthermore, if you’re someone who is very overweight, then running and jumping rope might just be out of the picture entirely. I forget where I read it, but the phrase “fit enough to run” is certainly a reality. For a lot of the population, you actually have to get your body to the point of being able to safely sustain a run. I don’t just mean doing it once and calling it good, but you have to be able to do it several times per week without injury so that you can actually progress.

I’ll also throw in that this works in the opposite direction of pulling and tugging on the joints. Kettlebells coming down from the overhead position exert a lot of torque and tension on the elbows hips. Personally, I like this as a counter to the pressing I do, but I realize that it’s not going to be something everyone can just pick up today and start doing.

In general, this rule means that things like cycling, rowing, elliptical machines, steppers, treadmills (for walking), climbers, and the SkiErg are the most likely candidates.

Footprint and Power Considerations

The next consideration is how much space something takes up. Garage gyms are usually space-poor. My personal gym must fit into an 18′ x 18′ space. Many people have less, because they also still need to be able to park their cars in the garage. We gave up on that, to my benefit. Basement gyms rarely fare much better. So anything that goes into the gym must take up as little space as possible, or at least be stowable.

If something is going to take up significant footprint, then it needs to be something with a ton of benefits and usability. A power rack and it’s attachments meet this criteria, but a super specialized piece of a equipment like a GHD might not. Similarly, large treadmills, stair steppers, and elliptical machines are also huge and consume a lot space and might not be worth it.

In addition, you have to consider power. My garage has exactly two outlets in it. One against the front wall and one on the ceiling with the garage door opener. If your equipment needs to be plugged in, then it further limits where you can put it without also having extension cords running all over the place. It’s better to have something that is either self powered or doesn’t need much more than a few batteries to run the monitor.

Given this constraint, I rule out most treadmills, stair climbers, and elliptical machines.

A Question of Technique

The next point is technique. Many great cardio techniques also have a skill component to them in order to utilize it well. Rowing machines are a key example of this. Most people don’t know proper rowing technique, and it makes their stroke inefficient. You can usually spot this when they return to the “catch” position and have to hop the handles up over their knees on the way back rather than returning back in a straight line. Similarly, kettlebells also have a significant skill component in order to avoid injury.

Even running is a skill when you consider all of the factors that go into it like cadence, stride length, foot strike, posture, and breathing patterns.

Ideally, a good piece of garage gym cardio equipment should be usable by anyone with minimal instruction. This also helps when you’re already tired from other work and your focus drifts a bit, allowing technique to falter. For a lot of workouts, especially circuit style ones, it’s nice to just hop on and go without thinking about it.

Versatility of Training

The last major point is how well the piece of equipment lends itself to a variety of conditioning methods. Can I use it for long duration slow work with a low heart rate? Can I use it for short bursts of intense sprinting for a few seconds at a time? How well can I adapt it to anything in between? This versatility is what makes a piece of equipment worth it’s gym footprint.

As much as I enjoy rowing machines, they don’t work well for me when it comes to very short intervals of 5-20 seconds. They take too long to get going, and the back flexion tends to feel uncomfortable. For medium duration intervals and long duration, the rower is awesome.

Other machines like powered treadmills, stair climbers, climbing machines (like the Versaclimber) and the elliptical all tend to work well within their narrow band of functionality, but then don’t work so well outside of that. I’ve never successfully short sprints on a stair climber. Similarly, the Versaclimber is amazing for short bursts and intervals, but I could never see myself doing 30-60 minutes at low intensity with it.

The Final Contenders

With that pretext out of the way, what are the options? When it comes down to it, accounting for everything I’ve mentioned, I really only see two good options as a general purpose piece of conditioning equipment in a garage gym. The first is a manual treadmill like an Assault Runner, Woodway, or a TrueForm (yes, I know there are more, this is more about the equipment category).

I honestly really like these options, but I simply don’t have the space for one- not to mention their much higher cost.

The second option is cycling. Everyone “gets” how to hop on a bike and start pedaling. There’s practically no learning curve to it. It’s joint friendly with no impact, and it also has minimal issues with causing soreness because there’s no eccentric contraction.

The category of “cycling is pretty broad, though. So from here, I narrow it down to bike that use air resistance as the main method of providing resistance. This is in opposition to something like a spin bike that uses friction or magnets. The reason I like air resistance is that it means you can get the bike going with very little effort, but then resistances scales quickly along with how hard you pedal. “The machine pushes back” is the way I like to think about it.

There are many options within the air resistance market, but I think the two industry standard competitors are the Rogue Echo Bike and C2 BikeErg. From here on out, I’ll focus just on these two.

The Rogue Echo Bike

For years, the only time I got on an air bike with pedals and arms that moved back and forth was for a five minute warmup before every workout at my old gym. I never actually did anything “serious” with them until some time in 2022 or 2023. By this point, I had already been doing several workout regimes that incorporated cardio, and I’d been using the rowing machine. One workout, in particular, was 90 second “power intervals” where you go as hard as you can for 90 seconds.

So one day, I’m at my gym and notice they had an Assault Bike Pro. I decided to give it a go and hopped on. 90 seconds proved about 45 seconds too long for me to sustain any serious effort. About half way through, I felt like I was going to puke and my power fell off a cliff. I quickly found out why the term for these kinds of air bikes are called “The Devil’s Tricycle.” The thing was flat out brutal.

The Assault Bike was a staple in CrossFit gyms around the world until Rogue came out with the Echo Bike at the end of 2017 and inserted it into to the CrossFit Games and Rogue Invitational. Ever since then, the Echo Bike has become the standard by which all other air bikes are measured. It’s big, brawny, overbuilt, and has a practically maintenance-free belt drive. At $895, often with shipping included, it’s not super cheap but it’s also a good bit less expensive that other competitors like the Assault Bike Elite, Schwinn Airdyne AD7, American Barbell Eagle Bike, Bells of Steel Blitz Bike, and the Vulcan Thrasher.

Perhaps one of the biggest advantages to the Echo Bike is that it’s a known quantity. If you’re in a discussion with other people about a workout, you can share numbers from your Echo Bike (i.e. watts, calories, etc.) and everyone is on the same page because it’s one of the most popular bikes out there. Second place would go to the Assault Bike options, which are also very common and produce similar metrics to the Echo Bike.

Generating Resistance

The Echo Bike is dead simple. You’ve got a crank case between your legs. When you move the pedals, you turn a crank with a belt drive attached to a flywheel equipped with 10 large fan blades. Each blade is about 2.75″ wide, and has a gusset along the sides to further direct air towards the tip of the blade and not let it bleed off the side.

Also attached to the flywheel are the two large arms that move back and forth in time. The arms have 1.5″ handles coming off the sides. You can move the flywheel by using the arms only, if you wanted to. In practice, you apply force to both the pedals and the arms at the same time to distribute total force production across the lower and upper body simultaneously.

The Echo Bike has fixed gearing, meaning that the flywheel, pedals, and arms are locked together. The only variable you have is the RPM of the flywheel. If you push harder, the flywheel goes faster, which also means the pedals and arms cycle faster. The faster you go, the more drag the steel fan blades produce and the more the bike pushes back against you to slow down.

The Echo Bike Tech Stack

The monitor of the Echo Bike is simple. It’s a single display with a few buttons for different functions like setting up intervals or picking a target distance, duration, or cadence. During a session, the display tells you your current wattage output, flywheel RPM, speed, total distance, elapsed time, time remaining (if using a time target), and total calories produced. If you’re using the interval timer, it also tells you which interval you’re on.

The Echo Bike also works pretty seamlessly with may heart rate monitors. My Polar H10 chest strap connects immediately without any further input from me, displaying heart rate at the bottom of the screen. My Polar Verity Sense arm band requires me to press and hold the “connect” button to pick up the ANT+ signal.

So far, I’ve found the three most useful metrics on the monitor are wattage, RPM, and calories. Pretty much any workout you do on the Echo Bike is based on one of these three things. For example, perform a series of 10 second sprints at 80% of your maximum wattage. Or, produce 15 calories, then perform 5 kettlebell snatches per side, and repeat for 20 minutes. Another might be to do 2 minutes at 90% of your maximum aerobic speed (measured in RPM) followed by 3 minutes of easy pedaling.

Because of the fixed gearing, RPM, wattage, and speed are all tied together and any of them will work for sprint interval output. Pick the one that is the easiest for you to follow.

The monitor works well for what it does. I think the Echo Bike is built for high-traffic gym use, so it lacks a few “comfort features” that you might want in your home gym. For example, the bike does not keep track of past performance for you. The display is also not backlit, which assumes that you have generally good bright ambient lighting available.

Working Out With the Echo Bike

For two years, the Echo Bike was my only piece of “cardio equipment” in the garage. My rower is elsewhere in the house, so it didn’t get much use just out of convenience. I used the Echo Bike for everything, including up to 90 minutes of zone 2 “LSS” with low heart rate, all out sprint sessions, circuits, and everything in between.

Before I bought it, several reviewers commented on that doing low intensity zone 2 work on it was “terrible.” Posters on Reddit said how unbearable it was for any kind of duration other than sprinting. Let me come up front and say that they’re wrong. I found doing traditional low intensity cardio on the Echo bike to be perfectly fine.

The catch is that with the fixed gearing and moving arms, you’re never really able to simply “zone out” and do cardio like you might on a treadmill or something else. If you thought you were going casually read a book or something…well, no. Monitoring your heart rate and managing the RPM of the flywheel by constantly adjusting your speed just demands your attention at all times.

Perhaps this demand for attention was why they didn’t like it. But given my prior main cardio method was a rowing machine, having to stay engaged was just something I was used to.

As for sprints and intervals, the Echo Bike is sufficiently brutal.

Something I really like about the metrics in the Echo Bike is the calorie count. Unlike other cardio equipment I’ve used, the Echo Bike only counts calories as a function of mechanical work produced by the bike. It does not try to account for your metabolism, too. This is good for tracking performance over time and comparing with others.

The Downsides

Two things come to mind as downsides to the Echo Bike in particular, but not necessarily this type of fan bike at large. First is that the bike itself is pretty large. The seat post has a good amount of adjustment vertically and horizontally, but the handles are the same height regardless. I’m 6’1″ and find it perfectly comfortable, but Allison is 5’4″ and finds the handles uncomfortable to manage.

Furthermore, the crank case is also very wide. Cyclists call this the “Q-Factor” or “Quack Factor” owing to the wide stance of ducks. The Echo Bike’s pedals are a whopping 250mm apart, as opposed to the 150mm that is standard on road bikes (and 170mm on mountain bikes). This wider distance not only robs you of efficiency, but it can also contribute to knee and ankle pain over time. If you’re taller, like me, it’s probably not an issue- but for someone who is short, it can be a bigger deal.

Echo Bike Verdict

In all, I think the Echo Bike is a fantastic piece of conditioning equipment. it demands a lot of you, but it also rewards you for the effort. It’s well-built, provides good data, and doesn’t require much in the way of maintenance. Honestly, had I not also experimented with other bikes I probably wouldn’t have had much negatives to say about it. What dings I do have amount to quality of life conveniences that I didn’t even know I liked until later.

The C2 BikeErg

C2 is mostly known for their Rowing Ergometer. They’ve been selling them for decades.

C2 uses air resistance and drag to measure power output. It’s in the name, actually. “Erg” derives from the Greek word “ergon,” meaning “work.” So the name literally means “work meter.” The general principle is that the equipment has a drum attached to it. Inside the drum is a finned flywheel that produces drag. C2’s monitor would measure the speed of the flywheel and how quickly it decelerated due to drag to estimate power output of each stroke of the rower. Over time, this displayed how much work the user was putting into the machine.

In 2009, C2 released the SkiErg. It used the same principle, but rather than a seated rowing format the SkiErg emulated cross country skiing poles by having the handles overhead. Pulling the cables down and to the rear as a full body movement was like engaging ski poles to shove yourself along.

In 2017, C2 released the BikeErg. It took the same idea, with some engineering tweaks to the design and calculations, and attached the drum to bike pedals. At $1100, it’s not cheap, and it’s a few hundred dollars more than the Echo Bike. It’s made of aluminum, so it’s lightweight, but it’s engineered in a way for very good rigidity. For the serious cycling enthusiast, $1100 is on the very low end of cycling trainers. Specialty “smart bikes” like the Wahoo KICKR SHIFT or Tacx NEO run into the $3000 to $4000 range. It only goes up from there.

Even the standalone trainers that you mount your own bike to still cost more than the BikeErg, and that’s not including your own bike.

Generating Resistance

For the most part, this works very similar to the Echo Bike. You sit on the bike’s saddle and push on the pedals down below. The pedals use a belt drive connected to a flywheel. The more power you put into the pedals, the more the drag of the flywheel’s fan pushes back against you.

But that’s where the BikeErg deviates and does things closer to a real bike.

First, whereas the Echo Bike is an open metal cage for all of the air to enter and get caught in the fan blades, the BikeErg (like all C2 equipment) uses a drum with variable damper on the side. In effect, you control how much air enters the drum by opening and closing the damper. Closing it means less air enters and the flywheel encounters less drag. Opening it all the way lets in the most air and triggers the most drag. The bike has a sensor on the damper so it knows what setting it is at, and it also monitors the drag factor on the flywheel. These two numbers factor in to the displayed power output.

On the BikeErg, this is a lot like selecting gears on a bicycle. Going to the high gears (opening the damper) means increasing the resistance but also opens up the opportunity to generate more power at lower RPM. At lower gearing (closing damper), you can maintain a high RPM without burning yourself out on resistance. The goal is finding the right amount of resistance that lets you generate the most amount of power over the desired length of time.

Pedal Movement

Furthermore, the pedals on the BikeErg are clutched like a real bike. That means that if you stop pedaling, the flywheel continues to spin even though the pedals aren’t moving. To prevent you from “cheating,” the BikeErg only measures power while you’re pedaling. So if you stop pedaling and try to “cruise,” it stops counting. 

Because of this, I’ve found the BikeErg can be a quad burner and feel “harder” than the Echo Bike. You can’t distribute the effort to your arms and legs, and you also can’t stop pedaling to get some rest and let the bike “take over” for a few seconds.

The BikeErg Tech Stack

This is one of the places the BikeErg shines. I’ve long heard about how good the PM5 monitor on C2 equipment is- but this was my first time spending significant time with it. At first glance, the monitor is simple. It has one big backlit LED screen with a series of buttons to navigate the options. When you get going, though, you can see all of the data available.

Like the Echo Bike, it tracks distance, speed, watts, calories, RPM, etc. It also has additional displays for charts and plots of power output, heart rate, and even a pace function where you can compare yourself against another “rider” as a pacer. I was already reasonably familiar with this from using C2 rowing machines in the gym.

Unlike the Echo Bike, the BikeErg’s metrics around cadence/RPM, speed, and wattage are not linked together directly. The damper and clutched pedals are complicating factors in the calculation. The bike must account for your pedal cadence, the drag factor of the damper, air pressure, and flywheel speed to calculate these numbers. You could keep the pedals at the same speed, but adjust the wattage by moving the damper. This makes things interesting later on.

PM5 Supplementation

Where the PM5 really sets itself apart is when you incorporate your phone or tablet into the system. The BikeErg has a device holder perched atop the handle bars that you can adjust to hold whatever you want. When you use the C2 App “ErgData” on the device and connect it via bluetooth to the PM5, it gets wild. On top of letting you control the bike via the phone, you can also use it during workouts as a customizable display with more data and charts. The app also has a “live loop” feature where you can join a virtual cycle track with other users who are also using the live loop and race against them in real time.

It’s not as fancy as something like Zwift, but it is neat. Even then, you can load up Zwift on your phone or tablet, connect it to the BikeErg, and put the device in the holder.

The PM5 and App also keep track of prior workouts and add them to your logbook. This gives you a ton of data to look back on for every session, and you can share these sessions with your training partners (or coach) for review.

Working Out With the BikeErg

Like the Echo Bike, the BikeErg comes loaded with a bunch of workouts already loaded. You can press the “Just Ride” button and go for it, or do any of the time trials, interval sessions, or other targets it has. Additionally, C2 puts out a daily WOD via the associated App. If you connect to the PM5 with bluetooth, just click the WOD on the app and hit “Ready.” Now you have a different daily workout to go after and you don’t have to input anything.

Bonus is that when you finish the WOD, your score is automatically uploaded to the C2 “Honorboard” to see how you stacked up against everyone else.

The workouts themselves aside, I appreciate the adjustability of the BikeErg. It has the standard seat height adjustment, but also handlebar height, and you can also move the handlebars forward and back. It works equally well for Allison as it does for myself. The Q-Factor on the BikeErg is also a standard 155mm, so it’s quite comfortable.

The pedals move smoothly, and it’s very easy to hop on and get going with minimal effort. But, like the Echo Bike, that resistance ramps quickly as you pedal faster. If you feel like your pedaling cadence is already high and you want to amp it up, then adjust the damper to add resistance.

I love the data in the logbook. It’s great to look back over a session and see what was going on at different splits and intervals with heart rate, power output, etc.

Since the handles are fixed and you can reduce the resistance to pretty low, the BikeErg is also easy to go into that “zone out” headspace where you can just pedal while doing other things with your hands or brain. I’ve seen people set up little desks on the handlebars so they can work, read books, or do whatever while keeping active.

Drawbacks

Two things come to mind as a possible issues for the BikeErg. The first is how it counts calories. Whereas the Echo Bike only counts the mechanical work of the bike towards the calorie count, the BikeErg adds on a nominal 300 calories per hour to represent “you.” The idea here is that you get a better sense of how many calories you burned during a session between both the bike and your own metabolism.

The problem is that this 300 calories per hour is a wild guess based on a 175 lb male. It has no basis in body composition, fitness level, environmental factors, or anything else that could affect human metabolism. I would rather the bike just base the number on the mechanical work of the flywheel and accumulated wattage.

Personally, I also think that any piece of cardio equipment that adds on an estimated human calorie consumption is encouraging bad habits. How many people out there have gotten off of a piece of equipment at the gym that told them “400 calories burned” after a 45 minute session, and they assume that it means they burned an extra 400 calories for the day? Then they go off to wherever and smash down a Starbucks Frappuccino bar thinking they “earned it.”

In reality, 225 calories of that 400 was the equipment guessing their metabolism and the remaining 175 calories was the actual work they performed. That 275 calorie grande Frappuccino actually means they’re eating 100 calories extra for the day.

Standing on the Pedals

The second issue I can think of relates to the pedal clutch. Remember that the pedals on the BikeErg are not fixed to the drive train. They add power when you pedal with them, but if you stop pedaling then the pedals also stop moving even when the flywheel continues rotating. This is how a real road bike behaves, like the wheels continuing to roll even when you aren’t pedaling, but it’s not how your average spin bike behaves.

Allison brought this up to me the first time she got on the bike for a ride. In the past, she attended a lot of spin classes at her local gyms, and has a good repertoire of spin workouts in her mind. If you’ve never gone to one before, it’s a common thing in spin bike classes for the instructor to tell everyone to get up out of the saddle and stand while pedaling.

A traditional spin bike has fixed gearing like the Echo Bike. The flywheel and pedals are locked together and turning at the same RPM. The heavy flywheel imparts momentum to the pedals, so that even of you stop pedaling or reduce your effort, the momentum of the flywheel still causes the pedals to push against you and keep you going. This helps you when you get up out of the saddle because the momentum of the pedal on the “off” foot is still pushing up against you and getting back into position.

With the BikeErg, it does no such thing. The only way I’ve found to “stand on the pedals” and have it feel somewhat doable is by having very high resistance. Otherwise, the movement feels choppy. This isn’t really a downside so much as it is an acknowledgement that the BikeErg behaves like a real bike, and I’ve never climbed up out of the saddle to pedal while standing unless it’s been on an uphill climb with lots of resistance.

So, in other words, the BikeErg is not a “spin bike” and you should not expect to do spin bike-style workouts on it.

C2 BikeErg Verdict

Like the Echo Bike, the C2 BikeErg is a fantastic piece of equipment. It’s sturdy, works very well, and is relatively affordable compared to other high end options. The level of data that it provides is awesome, especially if you’re going to track progress over time. If you’re trying to get a “true” road bike experience with handlebar shifters and computer-controlled resistance, something that the serious cycling enthusiast likes, you’ll not find that here. Those kinds of “smart bike” trainers run into the $3k to $6k range, though, so it’s a whole different price class.

From my perspective, the BikeErg is an outstanding cycling trainer for the average person who wants to build general conditioning using cycling as their preferred method. If you’re a hardcore cyclist who wants to go compete in races, then the BikeErg is workable but you’ll probably want to look upmarket for the more specialized trainers.

Crowning the King of the Garage Gym

As much as I love the Echo Bike, I think the C2 Bike Erg is the king for the home gym dweller.

Both give you the potential for killer workouts, and both greatly enhance your level of conditioning provided you use them consistently and intelligently. As an overall conditioning builder, I think the Echo Bike is actually better because of the way it engages both the arms and legs together. This is a great global metabolic builder since your body can’t focus blood and oxygen in only one area like the legs.

However, even though I think the Echo Bike gives a better single workout, I don’t think it’s miles better than the BikeErg. When you also factor in that amount of data and connectivity that the BikeErg brings to the table to help you track progress over time and feel like part of a community (at no extra cost), I think that’s a huge win.

Quibbles I have with the way the BikeErg tracks calories are irrelevant when I can just use distance travelled instead. The BikeErg calculates speed and distance by calculating energy output over time, so it’s effectively measuring total work. Any interval I might do on the Echo Bike for however many calories has an easy equivalent on the bike erg by paying attention to distance travelled.

Given that both of these pieces of equipment will likely last forever, you can make a good case for either one at their current price points. They both take up a similar amount of space, produce roughly similar levels of noise, and have a lot of enthusiasm in the enthusiast world. The BikeErg just brings a little more to the table for versatility and data.

Buy either with confidence, but I like the C2 better for most people most of the time.

Addendum: Fitness Testing

Running up to this post, I was digging into alternate ways for measuring fitness levels with the bike. My own fitness assessments focus on running, because it’s accessible and easily applicable to “Martial Marksman Things.” I admit that running isn’t always a convenient thing to train and test, especially when it’s in the colder months and you don’t have a good place to do it.

A great alternative I discovered is an evolution of the 1.5 Mile test. If you don’t remember, the 1.5 Mile test favored by the military (particularly the Air Force) and law enforcement units comes from the work of Kenneth Cooper. Cooper’s original test was actually a 12 minute run where an individual ran as far as possible in 12 minutes. Dr. Cooper discovered that how far someone could run in 12 minutes had a very strong correlation with their VO2 Max.

The trouble was that everyone runs at different speeds, so a 12-minute test would be difficult to administer to a group of individuals who would end up at different points all over the track. To account for this, Dr. Cooper went back to the drawing board and found that you could get to a similarly strong estimate of VO2 Max by seeing how quickly someone could run a distance of 1.5 miles.

So what does this have to do with an article about air bikes?

Cooper’s Cycle Test

It turns out that Cooper also used that same research to devise a 12 Minute Cycle Test, and later Dr. Paul Vanderburgh refined it into the 12-Minute Stationary Cycle Ergometer Test. The key thing here is that you need a way to effectively measure the amount of work produced in a 12 minute timespan. This is the biggest indicator of fitness per the test.

Luckily, the BikeErg is an ergometer and serves as a great tool for the test. It converts total work via power/wattage into distance over time.

I haven’t yet figured out how (or if) I’ll use these as an alternate to the run test, but I figured you might find it useful anyway. Here were the tables produced by Dr. Cooper in 1982

12-Minute Bicycle Test for Males. Distance in miles for different age groups.

12-Minute Bicycle Test for Females. Distance in miles for different age groups.

I know there are other ways to test fitness with a fan bike like the Echo Bike or other tools, but as far as I can tell nothing has as much scientific backing behind it as does regular cycling. Rowing also has a solid body of data and experimentation behind it, though, and someone has figured out how to use the 12 minute test for a Rowing Ergometer as well.

PS: Other Garage Gym Cardio Methods

This post focused on Echo Bike and the C2 cycle ergometer. Really, I picked these two because they are the the most common (and best?) representations of their respective classes of equipment. I don’t think you’d get much a difference in your results if you picked a different fan bike over the Echo Bike. Similarly, you’d probably get good results from an alternative to the C2 BikeErg like the Xebex AirPlus (which costs more, anyway).

Likewise, I also think you can still get an incredible conditioning hit from a rowing machine or the SkiErg.

And then there’s still the other options I discounted earlier just to get to the bikes, like jumping rope, running, kettlebells, etc. The truth is that all of it works, and will work for a long time. The only “rules” are that conditioning is specific and you have to do it consistently. Getting excellent at cycling does not necessarily mean you get great at running at the same time. There will be some cardio benefits for sure, but all of these movements are skills that you need to practice.

Whichever method you choose, take the time to master it. Monitor your progress and progress it over time.

Good luck, have fun!