Development and calibration of an indoor cycling bicycle with load graduation

Abstract

Indoor Cycling (IC) has considerably grown at fitness centers, due to practitioners giving-up of street cycling because of security issues as well as the trainability and practicity. IC also has the potencial for helping to lose weight and cardiovascular conditioning. There are only few studies on this subject, and the main reason is the limitation of the Indoor Cycling Bicycle (ICB), which does not either measure workload or power. Therefore, functional evaluation and adequate training prescription are limited and the solution lies on implementation of an ICB with loading system. This paper has the purpose of describing the development and calibration of an ICB that actually measures workload and power. The project was based on the adaptation of a loading system from a Monark mechanical lockwire cycloergometer (basket of weight), which measurement is considered a gold standard, on an ICB. The adaptation, for having maintaining the Monark dimensions of the Flywheel/Crown/Ratchet circuit as well as for using new materials, seems not to offer any type of limitation for prototype construct validity. The ICB also had a low cost. Therefore, this ICB can be classified as a cycloergometer. The adaptation permited to advance in this area, by both maintaining orignal ICB characteristics and also controlling for workload and power.