Let's talk stationary bikes

So I've had a stationary bike for a bit over a year. I think I've used it twice.I'd like to change that.

It's not fancy, even the LED screen is broken, but it has pedals, a seat, and a knob to adjust tension.

I've been doing a bit of googling and keep finding all kinds of "miracle routines" that seem to want a programmable bike to do. Nope, not buying one.

Anyway, I want to get into riding it a bit. What's a good way to start?

Honestly, I've had a pretty sedentary lifestyle the past couple years, so I feel like I should ease into things a bit.

My thought is to start at 30 minutes/day at a set tension that provides some resistance but nothing crazy. Should I skip days? Is it a bad idea to start out on a fixed resistance and work up to alternating or should I start off alternating? Eventually I'll upgrade to 30 minutes twice a day, once in the morning and again at night. 

I don't really have a goal other than to get into better shape. No set weight loss or size loss goals, just improve my activity levels, improve the circulation in my legs, and start building up my stamina again. I've been noticing things like swelling in my feet that could be nothing at all, but having lived my first 28 years dealing with someone with kidney disease, I am a bit concerned it could be something since his problems stated astound my age. Luckily, I'm to poor to afford doctors, so I know I'm in perfect health. 

I might even get crazy and combine this with however many pushups I can do at a time, but again, I've been seeing it's better overall to skip days or to alternate exercises daily.

I guess I'm asking help me design an exercise plan that won't cost any money or require any more stuff than I have.

I'm thinking something like MWF pushups and 30 minutes of the bike, TThSa situps or squats and maybe 30 minutes of the bike, with Sunday a rest day would be a good place to start, but I'm very open to suggestion. 

One final question, is yoga bullE36 M3? It's just stretching, while I can see the benefits of proper stretching, can it really do any more?

I think I'd find it easier to set a distance, and a difficulty level (with your knob), and just ride that distance each day, but increase the intensity/resistance a little each time. So maybe instead of just riding for 30 minutes, try to ride 2 miles in 10 minutes. Next time, try to ride 2.25 miles in 10 minutes, or crank up the intensity and cutback on the distance for some sprint work. You don't want it to be a boring, grueling marathon, that you dread doing, so mix up the times and intensities. It will help you avoid boredom, and it will keep your body from developing a tolerance, making your workouts more effective. Some days you won't feel like doing an intense workout. Listen to your body. Doing a low key workout is better than skipping a workout.

Muscles do need recovery time if they're worked hard. Alternating days is a good idea. Stretching and hydrating will reduce soreness and help prevent some muscle injuries. Drink more water than you want to.

Yoga has value. There are different types, but none of them are bad. Restorative yoga is just focusing on stretching and breathing. It's great for recovery after a difficult workout. Stretching is extremely important to avoiding injury as we age, and yoga can maintain or improve that aspect of fitness. Yoga can also build strength/stamina (particularly in your core) as you hold uncommon poses for longer than normal times. It helps to really focus on feeling what your body is doing, and that can translate to being more aware and in control of your body during other aspects of your life too. Yoga probably isn't going to completely transform most people's bodies, but it absolutely has it's place in a fitness routine.

First off, congrats on your goal to improve your fitness! You have asked some excellent questions, and that's a great place to start. 

Stretching is very important, for the novice and seasoned athlete alike.  There are lots of you tube videos with good "warm up" and "cool down" stretch routines, and after you learn the sequences you can easily work them into your workout without needing the videos. It is important to remember that with stretching, you want to hold the position for at least 30 seconds, but you don't need to strain to an uncomfortable zone. Just reach as far as you comfortably can and hold it, breathe, and relax into the stretch.

Bikes can offer a great cardio and build strength in the legs. Stationary bikes are often dusty, and that's cause they're boring. You will need to find things to hold your attention if you're going to stick with it. You can queue up a behinner's spin class video, or watch your favorite tv show. Challenge yourself to up the reps (spin faster, not harder) during commercial breaks or things like that to spice it up. If you are going for 30 minutes, do 10min warm up at an easy resistance, 10min at a medium resistance and or quicker pace, and 10min cool down at the lower resistance. I would hold off on any standing or high level resistance for at least a month to allow your body to adjust. At the beginning it is a great idea to have one day on one day off workout schedule, to allow plenty of time for recovery. You can still do stretching, yoga, and walking or arm stuff on those days. 

On days when the bike is not going to happen, go for a 30min walk instead. Keep yourself moving. Make a fitness calendar to help you ramp up slowly and set personal goals. Track what you eat as well as weight loss (if that's part of your motivation). Drink water, skip the sports drinks. Edema can be due to a poor diet that is high in salt, as well as other things. Track that on your calendar as well and if you don't see improvements after a few months definitely go get checked out.

Early on you will want to skip days.  When you get into better shape you'll be able to recover faster and work out every day, or multiple times per day.

Yoga is not BS, but its effectiveness (like any fitness routine) will depend on how dedicated you are to it.

If you want an exercise plan that won't cost any money or use more than you have, just lookup some crossfit no-weight workouts.  examples:  https://barbend.com/crossfit-no-equipment-wods/

A good way to ease in is some variation of the 100 burpee challenge, 100day Angie challenge, etc.

Trying to pedal for 30 minutes at a fixed output is really boring. Ach, screen broken. Being able to put a number to how much power you're making makes it easier to be specific with targets.

Either way, maybe try looking up GCN (Global Cycling Network) on YouTube; having someone giving you specific stuff to do helps distract you from the boredom. I subscribe to the Sufferfest, which isn't expensive, but even so it might not be worth it without the ability to hit specific power targets (they have an app that gives you a specific power target for every phase of a "ride" based on your tested power output, and also have training plans). Even just watching bike racing videos helps.

If you're not into watching videos of people riding bikes or yelling at you about how to ride your bike, you still might just come up with varying ways to shake it up so you're not just plowing away for half an hour and trying to hit one magic resistance that's easy at the start and all you can hang onto after half an hour. A few steady, easy rides just to get comfy would be good, but then you might play with a minute hard, a minute easy, or other variations on that sort of thing. If you google there are lots of "interval training" combos... I could bore you to tears, but I think a lot of it would be more specific than you need, and the main thing here is to get a workout without being so bored you fall asleep and stop pedaling... Not to mention that having nothing to keep your mind off your legs makes it really hard to put in the time.

I bought an old road bike and put it on a trainer thingy this past winter so I could try to stay in decent shape for mountain biking while it was too cold to ride.  Like many here are saying, I found myself bored as all hell with nothing controlling my routine, and couldn't get into any of the cycling specific stuff, so I made up a stupid and sort of arbitrary system around a Youtube gaming channel with some idiots playing PUBG- you could make up something like this as well with anything you watch, as long as it has some random-ish events to change things up.  Here's how my routine worked:

• Play any AWFUL SQUAD video from Polygon on Youtube (specifically looking for 100 player elimination type matches, which is most of them)
• Ride at a slow pace during any menu time or loading screen
• Ride at a moderate, sustainable pace during gameplay when no shooting is happening
• As tension builds due to sneaking up on enemies, the circle closing in, etc. ride faster
• If the players are in a shootout, sprint
• Every 25 players down, hop off the bike and do 25 pushups
• Every win or loss for the team, hop off the bike and do 25 pushups

This kept things random, let me watch something I enjoyed, and (since that series was still active at the time) gave me 2 hours of unpredictable training every week.  It was silly, but it worked well and kept me engaged.

Because I ride an actual bike frequently, I find stationary bikes mind-numbingly boring.  The thing that works best for me is to set up in front of the television and play World of Tanks on the X-box.  I can spend an hour working up a good sweat, and not feel that I've pissed that hour away playing video games.

In reply to Ransom :

Absolutely love the GCN videos! Good call thats what I was going to suggest too. 

There are a few good “HITT” bike vid’s on Youtube.  Shorter periods of all out ball busting work for 6-8 cycles and you are done.  Obviously to each their own, but it’s arguably better for fat burning and metabolism boosting vs steady state biking, and in quite a bit less time.  I mix this in quite a bit in the winter when it’s too cold and icy out to run.

In an aside, the HITT philosophy can also be applied to sprinting and body weight training among other physical endeavors.

And fwiw, I’ve found doing full squats with light weight really helps my endurance on the bike. Even doing air (no additional weight) squats for more reps seems to really help my leg strength.

One issue with HIIT and stationary bikes is that on lower end models the resistance just doesn't go high enough.