10 Healthy Benefits of Cycling
Consider the many healthy benefits of cycling as you ride into the New Year and beyond!
1. Pushing pedals provides an aerobic workout. That’s great for your heart, brain, and blood vessels. Aerobic exercise also triggers the release of endorphins, the body’s feel-good chemicals—which may make you feel young at heart.
2. Cycling builds muscle. In the downstroke, cyclists use the gluteus muscles in the buttocks, the quadriceps in the thighs, and the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles in the calves. In the up-stroke, cyclists use the hamstrings and the flexor muscles in the front of the hips.
3. It’s easy on the joints. When you sit on a bike, you put your weight on a pair of bones in the pelvis called the ischial tuberosities, unlike walking, when you put your weight on your legs.
4. Pedaling builds bone. Resistance activities, such as pushing pedals, pull on the muscles, and then the muscles pull on the bone, which increases bone density.
5. Cycling makes you happy. A study by the YMCA showed that people who had a physically active lifestyle had a wellbeing score 32 per cent higher than inactive individuals.
6. Cycling promotes weight loss. The simple equation, when it comes to weight loss, is ‘calories out must exceed calories in’. Cycling burns calories: between 400 and 1000 an hour, depending on intensity and rider weight.
7. Cycling cuts heart disease and cancer risk. Cycling raises your heart rate and gets the blood pumping round your body, and it burns calories, limiting the chance of your being overweight. As a result, it’s among a selection of forms of exercise recommended as being healthy ways to cut your risk of developing major illnesses such as heart disease and cancer.
8. Cycling improves navigational skills and mental agility. In the world of navigation systems and Google maps, sometimes there’s just not that much incentive to sharpen your natural sense of direction. Getting out and exploring roads can provide essential exercise for your internal mapping capabilities, giving you (with practice) a better idea of how to get around.
9. Cycling improves sleep. Researchers at the University of Georgia studied men and women aged 20 to 85 over a period of 35 years, and found that a drop in fitness of 2% for men and 4% for women resulted in sleep problems.
10. Cycling improves your social life. Joining a cycling club like GEARs is an excellent way to grow your social circle, and if you’re new to riding – you’ll probably find all the maintenance and training advice you may have been looking for.
Excerpted from:
1. Cycling Weekly, July 24, 2018, the 15 Benefits of Cycling, retrieved from https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/benefits-of-cycling-334144 January 8, 2019.
2. Harvard Health Letter, The top 5 benefits of cycling, August, 2016, retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-top-5-benefits-of-cycling January 8, 2019