 Hey everybody, I'm Lance Coyke and after about five months of use with the Soul SB900 bike I'm gonna give you my impressions what I like what I don't like and Hopefully help you decide if you're gonna buy one or not So Allison and I have had this Soul SB900 for a few months now I think this is exclusively what I've done for my my low-intensity cardio and I got my heart rate monitor hooked up here and we're just gonna do a little workout well I kind of talked through some of the things I like about it and you know things. I don't like about it. And this is our When do we buy it probably December? So this is maybe a four or five month long review Biggest things are I mean, it's super sturdy I was pretty sure about that when we first bought it and that was I mean primarily I My biggest concern was I don't want to buy a bike twice I want a nice bike that doesn't feel rickety isn't very loud not disruptive to our home here And I think we found that definitely. I believe this costed a thousand dollars Brand new we bought it from the Soul website. I'll leave that in the description So primarily the thing that I was concerned when I was researching home exercise bikes to buy Was sturdiness. I didn't want to buy an expensive bike and then have to replace it later on I'd been on the Peloton bikes and I kind of Knew that we would like that They're they're pretty sturdy. They're, you know, very metal construction But they're just so expensive and it didn't make sense to me shout out to my nose strip helping me breathe during the Allergy season here. I was looking at we thought about the the Peloton bike, but I Figured we could probably find a better value And I came across this one as one of the you know more top rated ones on the internet And it's great. I mean it really is super sturdy. It's very metal um That hurts the the Nobs and the connection points are all pretty steady. The only thing that kind of makes Some sounds that I'm not anticipating or not looking for is the handlebars Kind of do this like skew side to side if I'm really cranking on them But if I tighten it down, it's really like it's not even squeaking. It's got a little wobble It's not even squeaking So I Mean I would say If you're biking you're not supposed to be you know, it's not an arm workout necessarily You shouldn't be putting a whole lot of stress there. You should try to keep the stress in your legs So that to me is not a problem. I do have these two hand towels here One of the things that I was thinking about a lot with selecting the bike I want to be able to write a program for a client on my laptop here and This uh, we'll get to this connector later But what we wanted to be able to do is just set a computer or a laptop up here or a laptop or an iPad up here and Work through stuff if Allison's studying. She's in PA school right now physician assistant school And if she's got to do her notes like there's no time for exercise. So our big idea with this Was to find a way for her to exercise while she's studying And I think that worked Really well for her. It's worked tremendously well. She had some bad blood tests. I'll have to link up here to our first tea time 001 episode where we kind of talked through her bad blood test. She's young. She's mid 20s But her cholesterol is getting high and it kind of scared her She's really stressed with PA school and stresses a big component to that. So this bike was part of the solution She needed she didn't have the time to do exercise But needed to find the time and this was a good compromise. So she can just do it here in home for me. I've got a Giant TV right here. This is actually where we leave the bike for lighting purposes I almost didn't want to film here, but I wanted to show you this is exactly where it goes We bought this mat. It goes on the ground. It's black came from soul. It's fine. It's just a mat I thought it was going to be something super special. It's just a mat But we just leave the bike here and I'll watch YouTube while I work out and it makes the easy cardio less monotonous and more fun to do and more likely to do it, you know and I think I mentioned this but I haven't Done any other kind of cardio. I've done like High intensity interval stuff to supplement this training and I've done plenty of strength the training work But for my moderate intensity cardio, it's this bike Two or three times a week generally Haven't gotten bored of it yet in four or five months here So the construction very sturdy they shipped and I had to put it together I have an unboxing and an assembly video that I'll link to in the cards in The upper right-hand corner of this video Was pretty straightforward. Honestly. I mean it took a little bit longer than maybe I would have hoped But I couldn't imagine having somebody else put it together. It wouldn't it was just fine for me if you're Not Looking forward to manipulating very heavy exercise equipment Then maybe you don't want maybe you need someone to help you out there It does have wheels and the wheels they don't stick out very much So it's nice for the aesthetic of a home I'll come back to the pedals the wheels on the front to move the bike around They go round and round right they don't stick out a whole lot from the crossbar on the bottom the base crossbar so When you're wheeling it around we have hardwood and really thin Carpet here in our living room and it works Pretty well on that stuff, but actually this exercise mat it gets stuck on because the exercise mat Is maybe Quarter-inch thick and it's very compressible And so when I get on the wheels that actually takes up the slack the clearance of the wheel From the crossbar, and then it just gets stuck So I have to kind of like drag it through all that it's much harder than I would have anticipated You might be better getting away with a slightly thinner mat Maybe not from soul if you frequently need to move it now. We don't frequently move it We did early on just to kind of figure out where we wanted to put it But we found that here in the corner kind of away from everything was the best option and still Here by the TV and everything you could look outside a big thing that I like to do when I take breaks from work in the middle Of the day is I'll hop on the bike like I'm doing now, but I guess I'm still working right I like to look outside because I've been on the computer all day and the computer is really close and Makes your eyes converge, and they just get tired. They need to rest You need to look far away It's a good way, especially if you have a lot of fail a lot of eye strain or neck strain That you can attribute to working on the computer Definitely try something like that All right back to the pedals pedals are super sturdy the the cage on here It was important to me to not get pedals that I had to get biking shoes to clip into because I'm not like I'm not a cyclist. I don't do cycling classes I just tend to feel good if I put my seat pretty low and I do moderate intensity Like my hips don't have problems with that. They generally have problems with other stuff like heavy deadlifts and stuff That doesn't feel very good. Lots of jumping and running my hips don't like that But doing something low-impact like the bike and with the seat low helps a lot So I just want to put my shoes on my normal shoes my indoor shoes here and put them in these little cages and Pedal around they were really loose for the first two months And then I looked at them and I thought there's got to be a better way to connect these are these broken There is in fact a better way to connect them. I will Show you a little bit of a layover video here, but essentially I had to just like Take the the strap out and feed it through a different way And now it's really easy to just pull it tight And it's really easy to just flick with my thumb outward to loosen my foot and get it out Actually very ingenious design. I haven't seen many public bike stationary bike pedals like this that stay together. Well So I'm actually really happy with these now moving up. We talked about levers levers are good everything steel Adjustments are great. I've got forward backward on the handlebars I've got upward downward and I think forward backward. Yep, though. We only set that once On the seat here and so I can get in really nice spots I was telling you that we wanted to be able to do work on this and not just sit here and Grind our legs out, right? So it was important to us to be able to be a little more upright So I'll kind of drive the seat forward I keep my seat low and my handlebars stay forward So I'm not very bent over and then like I said with the computer stuff Like if I'm looking at something really close, it's kind of your eyes don't get a rest It's just like being on the computer except with less Poisonous eyesight unless you're just looking at another screen here, and then it's exactly the same What I wanted to do is to be able to be upright and then look away at the TV that gives me a few extra feet of space Then we've got levers here So this black lever in the middle and this red knob that twists here The red knob is the resistance for the pedals and the black lever stops the pedals so I put that down the brake engages and then This knob turns a lot. It's easy to get a precise measurement, but it rotates all the way around very easily so it's not like Your you've got a consistent position of the knob because it will make a few revolutions When it goes through its whole resistance range If I go all the way down. Oh My goodness I'm not controlled at all and it's almost effortless like I'm not pushing At all. I'm actually just slowing down so that I don't fall over And if I go all the way up There's a bunch of turns here Yeah, check that out So if I go all the way up, that's probably too much for sitting down to be efficient So here you want to stand up? and I like to just kind of Keep the tension on the legs as much as possible and just use my hands to keep my torso steady So I'm not doing a lot of this rock inside-to-side stuff But this is The max resistance so I'll normally do this just to give my Paraneum down here a little break because it hurts your butt to sit on these seats I don't know if this is a bad seat or if it's just narrow or if all bikes feel like this It does hurt. I do lose feeling down there So I do like to stand up sometimes and I don't necessarily want my workout to become this High-intensity sprint when I do that So I'll normally keep a pace like this my heart rate. I'll jump up to you right now. It's 147 I try to keep it under 150 when I'm doing this and then after a couple minutes I'll just come back sit down and lower the resistance a few spins My biggest complaint about the knob though is that if I'm Tracking my power output on the screen here if I crank the resistance up my power output plummets Because the only thing that the screen and the sensor are detecting is how fast the pedal and the wheel is moving It's not detecting the amount of magnetic resistance that you're throwing into the workout So even though I've put this resistance up and it is hard It is objectively harder. I'm not getting an increased power output measurement So my watts have dropped down to like 50 right now just because I'm moving so slow But they were at you know an easy 300 when my resistance was all the way down so for Interval type stuff you can't be super precise because of how much this rotates I don't know how you would standardize your Resistance other than I'm going to do a test with it a maximally minimum and then I'll do a test with it at its maximum resistance and those are just not Very conducive resistances for training So for our purposes of just doing low to moderate intensity cardio Every other day works super well But if I'm gonna run Conditioning tests or something. I'm probably gonna be better off with something like an air bike Though that's gonna be super loud. You probably don't want it indoors The display here will give you an instantaneous readout. It'll show you an average of your Speed your rpms your watts and your beats per minute if you have your heart rate monitor hooked up to it I've been able to do that successfully. I don't do it regularly because I like to keep track on my polar app on my phone instead And then it'll also show you maxes of all those numbers And then right here above the screen We've got this little tablet holder. It has these two screws that I was worried I was just gonna strip the threads of the plastic holder when I screwed them on So maybe I didn't screw them down enough, but this is Really loose It's not like rickety, but just the leverage of something sitting on the plastic holder is so Tremendous like the torque is so hard that I always feel like it's gonna pull pull open if I put my phone in there It's totally fine. I'm not worried at all and I think even Allison's iPad totally fine If I put my laptop up there, however I have to like wedge it in the bottom and then the bottom of the laptop sits up here And then the screen angles up like this that Is precarious there's not a whole lot holding it down and Extending out the laptop holder here Just isn't the greatest solution. It doesn't the laptop holder It's more of an it's marketed as a phone or I or tablet holder It's not marketed as a laptop holder. It's just because it's not big enough. It's not resilient enough So for me what I do with the laptop is I just generally put it on the windowsill over here So I can reach it still, but I don't really look at it I just cast my YouTube to this TV and then I keep pedaling One of my favorite parts about this bike That really made the win over the Peloton. It's not just the value and the cost of the bike But it's that there's no software. I Don't need to plug it in for it to work And we don't need to worry about finding, you know running an extension cord To another plug because we've run out of plugs in this corner That was just tremendous. It's so low headache for us Sometimes the screen is a little weird I had one issue where it would my heart rate monitor was connecting to the screen Before it could connect to my phone and it then happened while Allison was biking And I was still wearing it because we had traded off. That was less than ideal But it's only happened once Normally when I'm here alone, it's just fine I set up my phone first and then I hop on the bike and there's no confusion Now if you want to do high intensity interval training on this, it's totally totally possible totally easy You're just not gonna be able to track your progress Just cuz you can't standardize the resistance, but I could always, you know, I generally pedal at this speed Keep my heart rate around 130 But if I wanted to do a 20-second bout I Could go in two one go And I could pump that up and now it's slowing me down pushing way harder I'm just trying to keep the watts up to where they were 10 more seconds and Break and I just got a turn quick that works totally fine If you're really into tracking your power output, it's not gonna be the best option. You don't want a Spin bike or a fan bike like I had said earlier, but for just doing workouts. I can highly recommend this. I did have some questions about standing up at maximum resistance and I showed you that earlier, but I think if you're going Slowly enough it can still be a cardiovascular kind of thing and maybe a little less stressful on your knees. I Suppose I should probably do it while I'm talking about it, right? It can also be super intense Because you don't get the support from your butt and torso So it's really easy for this to just for me my heart rate Almost up to 160 already Just because I'm actually pushing here. You got to kind of Pull yourself down with your hands on the handlebars. Just keep yourself anchored But yeah, I mean you can hear me laboring my breathing 163 So it holds up for me I'm about 185 pounds 180 pounds somewhere in between there If you're heavier, I would say I mean it's still gonna support you mid 200s with a magnetic resistance much over that I think you're gonna I don't know It's hard for me to hypothesize, but I would think It would be more intense for you because your weight's gonna push the pedal down more Faster harder, and you're gonna have to control that It's essentially you're falling right and you have to catch yourself every time you fall When you get your weight over the pedals rather than me pushing the pedals with my legs when I'm sitting So it's it's just a totally different exercise, but you can do both and it adapts well One quick thing to mention that I forgot to do while I was biking is these water bottle holders They have these little hooks at the bottom and then they have a section for the water bottle to sit into at the top I find they encroach on my legs when I try to keep My stance so short like I try to move the seat close to the handlebars and the handlebars close to the seat It allows me to sit upright while I'm biking But these handlebars do get into my legs when I pedal while standing up and hopefully you can see that in the video Alright, I think that's everything I wanted to say about it. I want this to be kind of concise You got to see me actually work out been on the bike for 23 minutes here This is usually about the time. I'll stop maybe about 30 minutes As long as I alternate sitting and standing I don't get much problems with numbness in my Downstairs area. I have not tried to replace any seats If you've tried that, please leave a comment below Let everyone know about it and thanks for watching If you learned something hit the like button and subscribe to be notified when I release new videos about fitness or nutrition or whatever If you need something else to watch well, you know, this is kind of the culmination of our bike review series But I also like having dumbbells in your home Especially adjustable dumbbells. You don't I would buy dumbbells before I buy anything else really Maybe bands if you need them to be portable But dumbbells are awesome So I have these power blocks over here that are great They go up to 90 pounds and I'll just lay on the floor and do my bench press there But it's really hard to get the weights onto your legs Before you do the bench press. It's much easier when you're on a bench so I got some tips on the Technique the execution of that check out that video