50 calories on an air bike, for time. A short test of power and how well you tolerate lactate — usually over in two to five minutes, and decided by how you spend the first thirty seconds.
Score: total time for 50 calories. Every level rides the same 50 calories — what changes between Rx, Scaled, and Beginner is the pacing plan, not the work.
50 calories for time on an air bike — an Assault AirBike or a Rogue Echo. Most athletes finish somewhere between two and five minutes, which makes it a short, brutal test of power and lactate tolerance. It’s too long to sprint the whole way and too short to settle in, so the work is in holding a hard, steady output while your legs and arms fill up.
Air bikes punish a fast start. The fan’s resistance climbs with every extra bit of effort, so the calories you bank by sprinting the first ten cost far more than they’re worth — and you pay them back in the middle, when the pace falls apart.
Always test on the same bike model, and note your seat height. The Assault AirBike and the Rogue Echo count calories differently, so a time from one isn’t comparable with a time from the other. Write your seat setting down so the next test starts from the same position.
The 50 cal doesn’t scale by changing the number — every level rides 50 calories. It scales by how you pace it. Pick the plan that matches where you are on the bike, not where you’d like to be.
For steady pacing, your target is 50 divided by your goal time in minutes. A 4:00 goal means 12.5 calories a minute, held from start to finish.
| Goal time | Average cal/min |
|---|---|
| 2:00 | 25.0 |
| 2:30 | 20.0 |
| 3:00 | 16.7 |
| 3:30 | 14.3 |
| 4:00 | 12.5 |
| 5:00 | 10.0 |
| 6:00 | 8.3 |
Rates are 50 ÷ goal minutes, rounded to 0.1. The monitor’s cal/min readout can jump around from one stroke to the next — what matters is your average over the whole effort, not the instant reading.
An air bike rewards using your whole body. Every bit of push and pull you put into the handles is output your legs don’t have to find on their own — so the goal is a stroke you can repeat for the whole effort, not one that looks fast for ten seconds.
This is the same warm-up FITL gives you in the app before a 50 cal test.
Finish the warm-up 2–3 minutes before you start so you start fresh but warm. Reset the monitor to calories so it counts up from zero.
Retest the 50 cal every 6–8 weeks — long enough for training to show up in the result. Keep the variables fixed: same bike model, same seat height, same warm-up. A 50 cal on an Echo when you last tested on an AirBike isn’t the same test.
Your 50 cal results track on the Assault Bike page in the FITL app, alongside any 50 cal efforts you’ve logged manually — kept separate from your 30 and 100 cal efforts, so every test lands on a chart of like-for-like rides.
Get the 50 Cal Assault Bike — and every benchmark WOD — with a pacing plan for your level, and watch your times build on one chart.