Riding a bicycle is a fun way to spend time with your friends or family. It is a great way to take a trip through a park or spend time on a nature trail taking in the sights. The thing is, it also goes way beyond the fun side of living.
It also provides a variety of health benefits that you may not realize. Even at a leisurely pace you can improve your heart’s health, your muscle tone, and even burn some pretty extreme calories.
Just look at the facts and you’ll see why it is important that you take the time to exercise in this very special way.
Cycling Health Benefits
Here are the top 15 reasons why you should consider spending more time off the couch and on a bicycle with your kids, your partner or your friends.
15. Increased Muscle Tone
As an adult, the first time you jump onto a bicycle, you will most likely feel the burn of working your muscles almost immediately. This burn is great because you use muscles while cycling that you do not typically use.
It works several large and small muscles from the hip to the feet and can also encourage your knee and hip joints to continue functioning smoothly.
14. It Is Fun
Your mental state will improve and you will look forward to the next sunny day when you can get on your bike and pedal to work or through the park. When things are fun and you are having a great time, you will feel better overall.
13. Builds Stamina
Once you have managed to go bicycling for twenty or thirty minutes, shooting for an hour is not that hard to do. Walking longer distances and doing more active activities will come easier as well.
12. Improved Coordination
Cycling is a fitness activity that involves your entire body. Your hands have to work with your feet, your arms must work together with your legs, and your eyes have to take in everything all at once.
How much more coordinated will you be if you can train your body to work together from the toes up?
11. Anyone Can Do It
It is a type of exercise that everyone can do together. Parents and kids, senior citizens, and even people who are overweight or those with health issues will find they can do this type of low impact activity.
10. Makes Using the Bathroom Easier
Exercise is important for healthy bowels. Cycling is an easy exercise to love and will encourage you to “go” easier. It is all thanks to the intestinal contractions that come with riding.
9. Improves Heart Health
When cycling, you are going to get your heart rate up slightly, even if the cycling is at a very laid back pace. Studies have been done to back this statement up.
In fact, some research suggests that it can increase heart health up to 7% and if you can travel via your bicycle for 20 miles a week, you could see a decrease in your risk for coronary heart disease by 50%.
8. Reduces Stress
You will most likely be outside when riding, perhaps with your children, maybe feeling like a kid yourself. It is virtually impossible to be upset about things when riding a bike, enjoying nature, and living life.
7. It is Easy Exercise
Most people are in poor shape because they did not want to deal with the gym and they did not feel the encouragement to go exercise. Cycling is much easier to enjoy and easier for most people.
6. Avoid Tension
Think about how stressed you may get in a traffic jam or when you get stopped at every light on the way to work and end up late. You may still have to stop for lights, but you can wiggle through traffic much easier in the bike lane. Or avoid it all together and ride the wide open trails!
5. Inner Peace
How great would you feel being able to take a new route to somewhere you go daily? Your health is impacted by your happiness and peace. You can increase it all in a simple way. Test yourself to see something new on your regular ride.
You might be surprised at the different things you notice once you’re going a little slow and taking in more of your surroundings.
4. Sleep Becomes Better
This may seem like a weird concept, but relaxing and working out on a bike first thing in the morning can make your dreams more peaceful at night.
3. Living Longer
Your heart’s health, your weight, your circulation and all other aspects will be better off if you spend more time on a bike. This can lead to a longer life and a longer time of you feeling young and better about yourself.
2. Improved Sex Life
You gain stamina and endurance while cycling. You can burn calories during cycling. This can easily become evident in all other aspects of your life. Due to the fact that it also increases circulation and heart health, you can also reap other rewards as well. All of this will lead to confidence and a lot of other benefits.
1. Burn Massive Calories
This is the number one reason in many ways. It has been proven a leisurely bike ride through the park can burn 250 calories in as little as 30 minutes. That is 500 calories if you can do it for an hour.
If you cycle in the mountains or at a faster pace, you can burn even more in a shorter amount of time, with vigorous pedaling burning up to 850-900 calories in a single hour. How is that for helping you to lose weight?
What an amazing article!
You should decide to get on the bike if you are not already doing so. You should not always stick to your car, you need to have fun while improving your health.