Or “not exactly a Rogue Echo Bike review”
Welcome fitness fans! Garage gym readers! Workout enthusiasts of all shapes and sizes! You’ve maybe just received a brand new Christmas present. Or, you bought yourself a fancy piece of equipment to jumpstart your New Year’s fitness plan! In some way or another you’ve acquired the best air bike money can buy. Or maybe perhaps, you’re thinking of buying one for yourself? That’s right. I’m talking about the Rogue Echo Bike. Read on to learn about Rogue Echo bike benefits and be sure to read all the way to the end to learn about some great Echo bike workouts and Echo bike training techniques!
There are many great reviews of this fine piece of equipment out there, especially now that it’s becoming even more popular due to the pandemic/lockdown. This article is going to take a slightly different tack and explain what the fuss is all about regarding the Echo bike. We’ll talk about what you can do with one and why it’s such an incredible piece of equipment to have in your workout space. We’ll even talk about what a good Rouge Echo bike workout looks like (or can look like)!
But before we get to all that, if you’ve come here wanting to know if the Rouge Echo bike is actually a good piece of gym gear worth your hard earned money, let me just make this simple for you up front — YES, BUY THE BIKE! If you can afford it that is. It’s worth every penny. But why exactly??????
What is the Rogue Echo.Bike or Rogue Assault Bike or Rogue Stationary Bike?
First things first. The Echo bike is an air bike, NOT a stationary bike. Not that there’s anything wrong with stationary bikes like the popular Peloton, but they’re fundamentally different. You may have also heard it referred to as the Rogue Assault Bike or Rogue Fan Bike. This is just a confusion of terms and companies. Rogue Fitness makes the Echo bike. Assault Fitness makes the also popular Assault Bike, which was the first air bike to really get some notice and was popularized, at least partly, by its use in the Crossfit Games. Both the Rogue Echo bike and the Assault Fitness Assault bike are air bikes.
What is an Echo Bike
With an air bike, or in this case the Rogue Fan Bike, resistance is caused by fan blades that spin when you move the pedals. The blades move the air around them and that gives the user something to push against. This is a devilish little toy though because the harder the user pedals, the more air is circulated and the more resistance is felt. That’s why airbikes are so great/AWFUL. See what I’m saying?
Let me try again. The air bike is not for the faint of heart. A short time on it can feel like an eternity. It is quite simply put….a muther. But that’s also what makes it SO effective, both as a test of mental fortitude and as something that will truly challenge you physically and greatly improve your fitness.
If you want to hop on a bike and casually move your legs while staring at a magazine or watching reruns of The Walking Dead (no Rick Grimes? #notmythewalkingdead!), this really isn’t what you want. The Echo bike is about putting in hard work to get better. PERIOD.
Now the Rogue Echo Bike in particular is one beefy boy, made with thick strong powder coated steel not unlike that found on Rogue’s power racks. It’s bomb proof and you can rest assured that it will be durable and hold up to many, many years of dedicated use.
It is also belt driven (that’s what turns those big fan blades), and this means it’s a little more low maintenance when compared with a chain driven air bike. Either will get the job done, but chains need regular maintenance, so that’s something to consider in the Echo bike’s favor. Finally, it’s pretty easy to assemble, and doesn’t take more than an hour or so to put together.
Is the Rogue Echo Bike Worth It?
Cardiovascular Exercise – Any type of exercise that causes the heart to beat faster and harder for a period of time.
Usually when people see a bike of any kind, “cardio” is what they think of first, as in cardiovascular exercise. And the Echo bike certainly fits the bill here. It’s a great piece of cardio equipment. But it’s not just merely meant for “cardio”, but rather conditioning, as in the act of conditioning the body to become better efficient at pumping blood to the various organs. Why is this piece of cardio conditioning equipment better than others?
Well, this piece of machinery offers resistance in a way that running on flat ground doesn’t. So as your heart gets a workout, your legs have their work capacity challenged to deal with the aforementioned resistance. But that’s not all! Tell him what he’s won Johnny!!
Air bikes are Full Body Workouts
In addition to the work your legs are performing, the bike is truly full body. Since the handles move, you’re using your upper body as much as your legs. As you push with one arm, engaging the chest and shoulders on that side, you pull with the opposite arm, engaging your lats and other pulling muscles on the other side.
Push, pull, legs, and an increased heart rate, a.k.a. “cardio”, and the Rogue Echo Bike is truly a full body workout machine that few other exercises or pieces of equipment can match. Rogue Echo bike results include increased cardiovascular fitness and enhanced muscular endurance in the legs especially, with the shoulders and back benefitting as well.
Of course, you can’t really increase the resistance, so the machine does not replace heavy strength training, but it’s a perfect complement to it. These are hard won calories. After one 30 minute workout I completed, I had burned about 200 calories according to the Echo monitor. Not so according to the Apple watch, which clocked in at 371.
What Kind of Workouts Can You Do on an Echo Bike?
The other thing I love about this piece of equipment is the sheer variety of ways to incorporate it into a workout routine. Here are the myriad ways I like to incorporate Rogue Echo bike workouts in my own home gym space…
As warmup and/or cooldown
As a finisher to burn extra fat/calories at the end of a workout
As “buy in” to a workout. In other words, burn xx amount of calories before beginning strength training, or complete a xx min bike workout before strength training, etc.. This is a nice way to trick yourself into getting some fat burning conditioning in before weights. Too often, I’ll lift hard and then end up bailing on cardio because of time or laziness. This fixes that issue. Side note- I would tend to do this more if I’m cutting or prioritizing fat loss, rather than going for a 1 rep max, where I’d want to reserve my energy for the heavy lifting.
To push myself with HIIT, a.k.a. High intensity interval training, at which the Echo bike excels. This is an efficient way to burn calories and you can have a very short workout and yet feel like you accomplished something significant due to the intensity. It’s also great training for mental toughness.
Any David Goggins fans out there? Try 1 minute max calories burned on the Echo. Or 10 minutes! I have no idea if David’s ever been on an air bike before, but the brutal nature of a good HIIT workout on the bike makes me think he’d love it.
Hit a quick 10-20 minute workout when I’m pressed for time, or the weather outside is miserable, or I’d like to suffer in silence (alone).
As a recovery workout. Good for “active recovery” days (days off from lifting where you’d still like to move some). Or as something simple that you don’t have to think about. It’s great for those days where you come home from work tired as hell and know you need to move, but just don’t feel like you have the energy/mental stamina for a full on workout. This bike will wake your ass up.
As you can see, there are many scenarios where a piece of equipment like this can come in clutch. It’s great as a stand alone workout, at the front of a workout, or at the end of a session. Short and intense, long and more endurance oriented, or somewhere in between.
The other amazing thing about this bike is that there are SO MANY variables to play with, the only limits are your own creativity! The Echo bike comes equipped with a nice big, clear monitor full of worthwhile data you can track during your workout. Using these different data points you can create a different workout every time and never get bored.
Just based on the monitor’s stats you can design a workout around total time, Tabata style training intervals (20 secs hard/10 easy), or trying to keep power output at a certain level for a fixed amount of time. You can set a calorie goal or distance goal. If you have a compatible heart rate monitor, you can do a target heart rate workout as well. You can also decide between using legs and arms (obviously you’ll use this most of the time), legs only, or arms only.
But let’s make things really spicy!
What Does an Echo Bike WOD (Workout of the Day) Look Like?
The above options deal with using the bike only. Use the bike as one part of an overall workout or circuit and now you’re really cooking with gas!
You can incorporate all kinds of other movements for additional benefit. A simple workout could just be 1 min of bike, 8 pullups for x rounds or for a certain duration. Or how about the below circuit which uses other pieces of equipment, but is still just a bodyweight circuit.
10 calories Echo Bike
10 pull ups
10 push ups
10 ring dips
Again, you can repeat for a certain time (keep going til 10 minutes has passed), or a certain number of rounds completed (where the number of rounds is the goal, say 5, in whatever time that is). Or try both, as in complete 5 rounds as fast as possible or go for 10 minutes and see how many rounds you can complete in that time. These types of workouts work especially great for benchmarks where you’ll test yourself again the following week or month and see how you’ve improved.
If you’ve got a truly kitted out gym, this could be the missing piece to fill in your fitness puzzle of greatness. Add in all kinds of movements including power cleans, thrusters, wall balls, box jumps….basically anything you can think of will pair well with the Echo bike.
Again, just like with the reviews, there are tons of sites out there where you can find cool air bike workouts and I encourage you to research and find some that you like. I’ll link a couple at the end of this article.
But on the other hand, I feel that creating your own workouts with the Echo bike and the equipment/exercises you have available to you is one of the funnest things you can do in your gym space! It enables you to push yourself, to learn about yourself (your strengths as well as your weaknesses), and to take ownership of your fitness.
Rogue Echo Bike Accessories
Lastly, I’ll mention here that there are several attachments available for the Echo bike currently. I have the cup holder, the phone holder, and the wind guard attachments and I really like all of these and believe that for the price they’re worth it. Garmin and Polar also make heart rate monitors that are compatible with the Echo bike’s monitor. I don’t own any of these, but may buy one in the future as it seems like it would be valuable to be able to adjust your workouts on the bike based on the heart rate monitor’s information.
Is the Rogue Echo Bike Wind Guard Worth It?
I will say that if you are considering purchasing the Rogue Echo wind guard attachment, I highly recommend it. Using the bike in the summer, it can be nice having the air directed back at you for a nice breeze if you don’t have the guard on. However, it’s a special kind of miserable feeling warming up on the bike in the garage in winter having ice cold air blasting you in the face.
Conclusion
I hope this article was helpful to you and that I’ve convinced you as to why the Rogue Echo bike is such a fantastic, effective, and versatile piece of equipment. If you’ve got a really good bike WOD please drop it in the comments below, as I’m very interested in testing out different variations of workouts on this thing. And Rogue if you’re reading this, I’ll take that Echo bike sponsorship now, thank you. If you’re looking to build your garage gym or home gym, take a look at this Rogue Squat Rack review. And if you’re looking for a little home gym inspiration be sure to check out how Bruce Wayne Batman has his gym kitted out here. Til next time!
