There are five different hand positions on the bike, and trust me when I tell you that I used all of them, especially during the insane Fat Burn workouts. It’s meant to trigger a huge calorie burn with 60 (!!!) eight-second all-out sprints with a 12-second recovery time, for 17 to 25 minutes. It’s really hard and you need an extremely responsive exercise bike to do it! This is when I stopped making fun of the Carol Bike in my head—when the program started warning me to skip some sprints before I keeled over.
Carol Bike notes that REHIT is scientifically backed. Technically, it is. There is one small-scale study with 20 participants at Western Colorado University that shows that, while calorie burn during the ride is lower compared to regular treadmill workouts, the excess post-exercise energy consumption (EPOC) continues throughout the day.
Photograph: Adrienne So
The Carol Bike is not for dilettantes. It is for people who are kind of psychotic about working out and are way too bummed if life circumstances force them to skip a day. With a Carol Bike in my house, it doesn’t matter that I got off work at 4 pm and made plans to meet a friend at 5 pm. I still can run upstairs, throw on some leggings, strap the heart rate monitor on my chest, do a REHIT workout, and run out the door 20 minutes later. There’s even toe cages, so you don’t have to change your shoes into clip-ins and can just hop on in your Vans.
The bike’s exercise program talks you through the workouts, and one mantra that stuck in my mind was the bike reassuring me, “Now you can work out because you want to, and not because you have to.” I found this reminder to be way too helpful. Now I don’t have to worry about getting a run in and getting in my lifting/climbing/hiking with my dogs and kids. I can do both! I can do it all! There’s a minimum level of exertion that I need every day to be a decent human being, and the Carol Bike makes it possible to squeeze it all in.
After a mere two weeks on the Carol, I’m starting to notice that I’m getting stronger. The Amazfit T-Rex 3 that I’m currently testing has noted in my runs that my performance is improving. I smoked my friends on a recent hike with 2,100 feet of elevation gain. (Let them please not read this! However, it’s true and I noticed.) More isn’t always better. Carol Bike, I’ll eat my words. And my texts.