Our MD Luigi Lobina says: “If you’re not having fun at work you’re doing something wrong.”

We certainly had fun when a champion cyclist joined us for some high energy, high performance exercise in the office.

Team members at our Derbyshire headquarters are ALWAYS up for a challenge – and very competitive! – so when Derbyshire Institute of Sport invited us to try the Wattbike challenge, of course we said yes.

Putting our team through their paces

Lobina are proud sponsors of the Derbyshire Institute of Sport, which in turn supports the members of the Huub Wattbike team. These are the cyclists from Derbyshire who have disrupted the world of track cycling winning world championships, a World Cup, Commonwealth Games medals and national titles.

We were very touched when one of the newer members of the team, Will Perrett, gave up the first rest day he’d had in ages to come and put our guys through their pedal power paces at our head office.

The static Wattbike is different from other indoor cycling machines because it accurately measures a cyclist’s power output in watts, the unit of power. Members of #TeamLobina were taking on the six second challenge to see who could produce the most watts by cycling as fast as possible in that short sprint.

Will was impressed!

You could say the competition was dog-eat-dog – but that might upset our three lovely office dogs who watched the proceedings with great interest. There was certainly a lot of rivalry with various Lobina team members shouting: “I’ve got the wrong shoes on!”, “He’s wearing a sports shirt!”…. and various other feeble reasons why they thought they were at a disadvantage!

Will was a great source of encouragement as he cheered the guys on. Afterwards, he said: “I was really impressed with how well everyone did. It’s always great to see people have a go on a Wattbike and see what they can do.”

It feels good to be a winner

The winner of the six second Wattbike challenge was Niko Lobina. His success led three of his colleagues – Lucio Martinazzoli, Tesfa Lennox and Mariusz Walaszek – challenging him to show what we could do over a leg-aching 30 seconds. In fact, Niko emerged victorious again. He achieved 1,292 watts in the six second challenge and an impressive 723 watts over 30 seconds.

Niko was delighted to lift the trophy saying: “It felt very good to be the winner!”

Another popular saying that defines #TheLobinaWay of doing things is that you never fail – you win or you learn. We’re very proud of how all the Lobina team members threw themselves into the challenge and we know that one of them learned that furious exercise when you’ve not had breakfast yet is NOT a good idea.

Staying focused when you are office-bound

Huub Wattbike team members are currently training hard ready to compete in the Tissot UCI Track Cycling World Cup, in Minsk, Belarus between October 31-November 3. A week after that they’ll be in Glasgow for the second round of the competition.

Will says they are very hopeful of doing well and we’ll certainly be following their progress and cheering them on.

Another reason why we loved doing the Wattbike challenge was that we know that taking breaks and having short bursts of activity is a great way to stay alert, focused and motivated when your job is office-based.

But maybe Niko won’t be winning a place on the Huub Wattbike team just yet – as Will told us he averages around 1600 watts on the six second challenge!

Thanks Will – it was a great morning! Good luck to you and the rest of the team.