The Benefits of the Assault Bike and Echo Bike for Cardiovascular Conditioning

Dr. Guillermo Contreras // #FitnessAthleteFriday // www.ptonice.com 

In today's episode of the PT on ICE Daily Show, Fitness Athlete faculty member Guillermo Contreras discusses one of the most effective and efficient ways to improve VO2max/fitness/endurance/conditioning both in the gym as well as in the clinic for your fitness athletes (and all clients).

Take a listen to the episode or read the episode transcription below.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

INTRODUCTION Hey everyone, this is Alan. Chief Operating Officer here at ICE. Before we get started with today’s episode, I want to talk to you about VersaLifts. Today’s episode is brought to you by VersaLifts. Best known for their heel lift shoe inserts, VersaLifts has been a leading innovator in bringing simple but highly effective rehab tools to the market. If you have clients with stiff ankles, Achilles tendinopathy, or basic skeletal structure limitations keeping them from squatting with proper form and good depth, a little heel lift can make a huge difference. VersaLifts heel lifts are available in three different sizes and all of them add an additional half inch of h drop to any training shoe, helping athletes squat deeper with better form. Visit www.vlifts.com/icephysio or click the link in today’s show notes to get your VersaLifts today.

GUILLERMO CONTRERAS Okay, live on YouTube and live on Instagram. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the PTI Daily Show. My name is Guillermo Contreras. Happy to be here with you on the best day of the week, Fitness Athlete Friday, talking all things fitness athlete and improving overall fitness in the individuals that we work with on a daily basis, in our clinics, in our gym settings, et cetera. Before we dive into the topic at hand, Let's go ahead and talk a little bit about the fitness athlete courses coming to your area as well as online. Fitness Athlete Live is going to be on the road over the next three months, quite a bit. Next weekend, we're going to be in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the weekend of December 9th and 10th. The weekend, and that's it for 2023, right? But 2024, we jump in right back onto the road. January 27th and 28th, we're going to be in Portland, Oregon. February 10th and 11th, Richmond, Virginia. And then February 24th and 25th, we will be in Charlotte, North Carolina. So plenty of options, whether you're in the mountains on the West Coast or on the East Coast, we're going to be traveling throughout those areas in the next three months or so. So feel free to check out the website, ptinex.com to find out how you can sign up for those. As a reminder, courses in price at the end of this year. So if any of these courses look like something you can get to, you want to get to, you can travel to, you're going to make a plan to get to. Snatch that course up now because right now courses are $650 and they're going to be bumped up to $695 in 2024. So take advantage of the lower price now. Get yourself signed up for those courses and then find a way to get to these courses but just check those out on the website for where those are going to be. And then fitness athlete level one online. The next cohort is going to start up on January 29th. Currently in the middle of a cohort right now. Started finishing up week four right now. So four more weeks there, a little short break, and then we kick back up on January 29th. And then fitness athlete level two, or what is formerly known as advanced concepts, that kicks off on February 4th. Those courses always sell out. We rarely have anyone that wants to get into it that can't get into it after they sell out. So if it's something you've been looking to do, if you're looking to become certified in clinical management fitness athlete through that certification process, then you need to be able to take a one, take the L2, take the live course. And again, that L2 only comes twice a year. So if it's been on your bucket list, something you want to take, sign up now sooner rather than later, because as I mentioned, those courses, All right. Um, so that is the introduction there. That is what we have on the docket. Um, as I mentioned, again, my name is Guillermo Contreras. I'm a physical therapist, uh, over here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and a part of the fitness athlete team here with the Institute of Clinical Excellence. THE ASSAULT BIKE FOR VO2MAX DEVELOPMENT The topic today, uh, the title, uh, is VO2 assault or assault on your VO2. I don't know why I wasn't too creative today, but there's there's a reason we're talking about it is The assault bike or the echo bike or like any air bike right we're talking about like this this beast This beautiful thing we have back here the assault bike I have here in my office Is one of the best tools that we can use to work with individuals in the clinic out of the clinic in the gym trying to improve overall cardiovascular conditioning, fitness, metabolic stress, like all these different factors that we can improve upon using a simple piece of machinery. This piece of machinery costs anywhere between $700 for the Assault bike, the standard or the original, I believe is what it's called, up to $840, $850 for the Echo bike, which you can get through Rogue, the Rogue Echo bike. It can go as low as, if you're really just kind of want to pinch pennies there, a couple hundred dollars, maybe $100, $150, or a Schwinn Airdyne. And those Schwinn Airdyne bikes, right, those are, like we used to have one of those from like the 90s that still worked like it was new. They last forever. they work forever, easy maintenance if you just take care of the chain with the rope echo bike a little more expensive because it's belt driven and again that lasts forever very little maintenance so they're just really really nice pieces of equipment to have. The weight limit then on them is around 300 for the soft bike 330 pounds for the echo bike and probably sure a little bit less for just your standard twin airdyne but they make like the airdyne pro that i'm sure has a 300 pound weight limit as well. last and survive through the apocalypse. That's how good these things are. Not only that, but in the clinic space, they are fantastic for working three limb conditioning. If you have any a knee injury, a hip injury, something that does not allow them to do something like running or standard biking or skiing or rowing, right? They have a limb that they cannot use. You can rest that limb and work the other three in a very effective way that increases conditioning overall. And the reason I'm saying all this, and the reason I'm touting up the Assault Bike, the Echo Bike, right, is because there is no reason that we should not have a piece of equipment like this within our clinics. And if we have something like this, there's no excuse for us not using it with our patients. Especially if you work with an athletic population. When you look at the NFL right now, how many people are getting injured? How many injuries are you seeing on a weekly basis? You've seen an excessive amount of Achilles tears, knee injuries, high ankle sprains, all those things. And one of the biggest things you hear when an athlete comes off of what they call the injured reserve is that, are they in game shape? Like they have the strength back, they have their motion back, they can handle the stress on whatever was injured, but are they truly in game shape? Do they have the ability to withstand rep after rep after rep on the field? And honestly, when it comes to conditioning, there is no better device. in a more efficient way than this behemoth, this beast right here, this monster, this thing we love to hate in the fitness athlete realm, in the CrossFit sphere, and in pretty much anywhere you see this bike. EFFICIENT RESULTS WITH THE ASSAULT BIKE This is proven in a wonderful study where it took 32 individuals and it put them in three different groups. The control group was given moderate intensity cardiovascular training. 30 minutes of 75% heart rate max, cardiovascular cycling, 30 minutes rate of 70, 75% of heart rate max. Group number two was given what we know as a Tabata or a half Tabata. They had to do 10 seconds sprints, five seconds of rest for eight sets. They then rested for two and a half minutes and repeated that whole cycle three total times. Group number three was given a standard Tabata, three sets, of eight repetitions of 20 seconds of work at 10 seconds rest. That is your standard Tabata 20 on 10 off eight rounds. They had to do that three sets with a five minute rest between each uh three set round you call it there or each eight set round I'm sorry eight round set. All in all the modern intensity cardiovascular training group did around three The 10-on-5-off group did around 72 minutes of work per week, so around an hour, a little over an hour. And the standard Tavada group, that three, or the eight rounds of 20-on-10-off, did around 144 minutes of work, or just over two and a half hours, sorry, around two and a half hours of work per week. What they found at the end of the study was that there was no significant difference in improvement across all three of them. All three showed improved time to fatigue, improved VO2 max, improved conditioning, and improved ability to create force, improved MET, M-E-T-S, M-E-T-S. But the big picture here, gang, right? Like what we see there is like, okay, like that means we can pick any of those and get someone more cardiovascularly fit. Yes, that is true. You can kind of pick your poison whichever way you want to do it. What we're talking about here is that the short group, the 10 on, five off, 72 minutes of work per week, one hour of work per week, that group was 250% more efficient in the use of their time to improve their cardiovascular fitness, to improve their conditioning, to improve their power output, to improve their time to fatigue than the other two groups that doubled and six times the amount of work. And how we can apply that is like when we're looking at individuals in the clinic, we probably don't have six hours of week to add to their program, to their plan of care, to get their conditioning up. They might not have six hours additional per week to jump on a bike and do 30 minutes of work three times a week as well. And if we want to get someone more conditioning, better shape, better heart health, improve health markers, blood markers, all those things, while also improving pain, reducing pain, improving function, increase in range of motion, whatever our plan is or whatever our goals are for them in the clinic, this device, the AssaultBike, the EchoBike, a nice quality Schwinn Airdyne bike, that is the way we can do it in a very effective, efficient manner. If you can do the same If you can have the same results in less time, people are going to buy in. If you can show somebody, hey, we're just going to do 8 sets of 10 on, 5 off before we start the session. I'm going to jack your heart rate up. I'm going to get your blood flowing. We're going to not only improve your overall cardiovascular fitness, we're not just going to improve your overall health markers. We're not going to just improve your conditioning, which again, if you're looking at working with athletes, whether it be in professional sports, amateur sports, high school sports, whatever it is, you need to build up their conditioning space or their conditioning ability. SHORTS BOUTS; GREAT RESULTS But across all populations, we can all benefit from this. We can all benefit from having better heart abilities, better cardiovascular fitness, better VO2 mass to be able to stand and do things for longer with less fatigue. So by using this device, using short sprint intervals, things like you see behind me, things like 10 on, five off, or eight rounds, three sets, two and a half minutes rest, or simply one set, one set of eight repetitions of 10 on, five off, right? We can have these small things that can affect individuals. It's also something they can easily do for a home program. if conditioning is an aspect they need to work on. If we're trying to get their VO2 max up, we can give them, hey, I want you to jump on the assault bike, jump on the echo bike. I want you to do 10 rounds. Just go as hard as you can. Rest five seconds. Do that eight times. Do that a few times a week. When you're looking at individuals who have Achilles tears, knee injuries, something where they cannot use that limb or it's uncomfortable to use that limb, they can still get after it with three limbs. They can use left leg and both arms and get after it on a soft bike. Again, effort is what matters here. Intensity is what matters. And when we're talking about working with individuals, trying to give them the most effective, efficient way to get better, get stronger, get healthier, and we're thinking of a fitness-forward approach to everything we do, this device, these tools, these strategies, these techniques, in doing that. and nauseam about getting people fit or getting people strong, using intensity as the way to do that. And if you're curious how it works and if it works for you, simply get on an assault bike, get on an airdyne bike, push yourself hard for 10 seconds, work a five seconds rest, repeat, rinse and repeat for eight rounds and see how you feel after that. See how the improvement comes upon there. Hope to see you on the road, gang. Hope to see you online. Thank you for tuning in. Have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you next time on the PT on ICE Daily Show.

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