Most people nowadays perform low physical activities. Globally the percentage of living a sedentary lifestyle is growing fast. To stay fit & healthy, you need to be physically active.
Cycling is a great way to be more physically active.
Riding a bicycle can help you improve your physical fitness and many more. In this article, you will know about the health benefits of cycling and how cycling can help you live a healthy lifestyle.
Let’s start.
10 Health Benefits Of Cycling Or Riding A Bike
1. Riding a bike improves your stamina
When you are cycling most of your leg muscles are engaged heavily.
Your leg and chest muscles are two major muscle groups in your body. Engaging them burns a lot of unused calories and builds your stamina.
Cycling also requires – the engagement of your hands to change its direction. Thus it also helps to tone your hand and shoulder.
During a cycle ride, your legs and hands are active… but your back and side muscles also get active from time to time.
Cycling more often can help you build your stamina and improve your physical fitness.
Muscle groups engaged while cycling:
- Calf muscles – Soleus, and gastrocnemius.
- Leg muscles – Hamstrings, quadriceps, Plantar flexors and dorsiflexors
- Gluts/Buttocks – Gluteus maximus, medius, and minimus.
- Shoulders – Deltoids
- Arms – Biceps, and triceps.
- Figures, wrist.
2. Cycling helps to Strengthen and tone muscles
Sometimes we all struggle to manage our time for a good workout. Or someone just wants to relax for some days but still wants to look good and energetic.
Well, cycling can rescue you.
One hour of cycling can burn 500 calories. It’s huge compared to other similar outdoor activities.
A lot of people and mostly men ignores or does not do enough leg workout.
Riding a bike to the gym or in the park can help you to build up your leg muscles.
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3. Cycling often can help you lose weight
When it comes to weight loss, most people think about diets and weight training.
I have already mentioned – one hour of cycling can burn 500 calories. So, it will do a huge favour if you are trying to lose weight or want to maintain your weight.
Because burning your unused calories can help you maintain a healthy body weight.
I saw a few people asking about – Does riding a bike helps to burn abdominal fat?
Here’s the answer.
Cycling not only burns belly fat. It also helps you to burn fats from other parts of your body.
Several people found cycling is an effective way to burn belly fat and fat around the core.
Cycling alone, may not give you abs but it will help you burn a lot of body fat for sure.
4. Cycling improves cardiovascular health
Regular cycling can help you prevent cardiovascular diseases like – heart disease, stroke and hypertension…
“Cardiovascular disease refers to several types of conditions affecting the heart and blood vessels, also known as the circulatory system.” – CDC
People of all ages have a risk for poor cardiovascular health if they don’t maintain the following thing.
PREVENT CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES BY –
- Eating a healthy diet
- Regular exercises and physical activities
- Maintaining a healthy weight and body fat percentage.
- Avoid – smoking and alcohol use.
5. Cycling can make you happy
When you feel happy your body releases two hormones, named endorphins and serotonin. These hormones are also known or called the – ‘happiness hormones.’
During cycling your body releases endorphins and it makes your mood lighter and happier.
Read more: Benefits of running in the morning
6. Cycling reduces stress and boosts your brainpower
Riding a bike always requires riders’ attention and activeness, physically and mentally.
So, it will help you to keep your stress away.
A bike can be your favourite thing to ride for exploring new places or just roaming around your neighbourhood.
Read: Benefits of spending time outdoor
7. Cycling boosts lungs’ efficiency
Well, like running when you cycle; your lungs inflate and deflate at an increased rate to supply sufficient oxygen into your bloodstream.
Regular cycling will help you to increase lung capacity and it also makes your lungs stronger.
8. Cycling helps you grow your social circle
For some people, cycling is just a physical activity or a convenient mode of transportation… but there are a huge group of people, for them, it’s more than that.
Passionate cyclist finds joy and refreshment when they ride their bike. Sometimes alone and most of the time one can see them cycling in groups.
There is plenty of cyclist groups and clubs you can join to grow your social circle.
You get to know more cool people like you while exploring and engaging yourself in a healthy activity at the same time.
Also, read: Benefits of intermittent fasting
9. You don’t need to make special time for cycling
This is one of my favourite thing about cycling.
It needs no additional time for it.
Riding a bicycle can be a very convenient replacement for many transportation options.
10. Cycling is planet-friendly
We all know that the crisis of fossil fuels is nearby. A huge amount of petroleum gets used by automobiles.
We know what to do… we need to reduce the depletion of fossil fuels and find other energy sources.
And we also know, we can’t stop using them immediately.
But we can reduce its usage for sure.
We can be a part of a great movement of saving our planet by replacing some of our transportation with a bicycle.
Keep paddling and make others ride a bicycle.
Conclusion
There are many benefits of cycling. Riding a bicycle for an hour can burn up to 500 calories. This is huge if you want to use cycling for weight loss.
Also if you don’t have a habit of running in the morning then instead of running you can try cycling in the morning. It will help you to stay fit and improve your cardiovascular fitness.
I hope you find this post beneficial to know about the benefits of riding a bicycle.
Read next: Benefits of living a physically active life.
