If you are shopping on Wrench Science, you probably don’t need to be convinced about the benefits of cycling and how riding your bike enhances your daily life. But you may be surprised just how many health benefits even a light amount of cycling can bring.
Whether you started out riding to get fast and race your bike, or you are a committed two-wheel commuter you can feel secure in the thought that you are not only enjoying yourself but helping improve your own health and even perhaps the health of the environment (especially if you’re commuting).
Cycling for fitness
Since many people start cycling with the expressed purpose of improving their health, it’s no surprise perhaps that it is actually working! As a low-impact, high yield sport, cycling does not cause injury in the same way frequent jogging can, and yet it results in a full-body workout that offers a wide array of health benefits.
Since cycling is an aerobic activity, your heart, lungs and blood vessels are heavily used. Riding at tempo causes you to breathe more deeply and your heart to beat faster. The result is improved cardiovascular fitness. If you remember how you’d huff-and-puff climbing stairs before you started cycling, then you’ll know what we’re talking about.
You’ll also likely feel how your muscle strength has improved as you have cycled more. Leg muscles become stronger and more well defined. Arms, shoulders, and back muscles also are used and increase in strength the longer you ride. And even if you don’t do specific core exercises – which we would encourage you to do if you want to improve your cycling performance – you will still enjoy having a stronger core than the rest of the non-cycling, non-exercising population.
You can learn more about what exercise you should do before and after cycling in our article how to warm up before cycling.
Advantages of cycling go beyond the physical to include mental health improvements. Exercising in general, and cycling in particular, can decrease stress levels and increase mood-improving endorphins to keep you feeling chipper and relaxed. Nothing clears the mind like a solo bike ride on quiet roads. And the lifelong friendships and good-natured camaraderie developed on group rides adds an important socializing enjoyment of cycling. Whatever issues you may have been mad about at work no longer seem that problematic or important once you have been able to release your mind to think about things outside of work while on your ride.
Cycling as a preventive measure
When you are actively helping major muscle groups and essential systems of your body, like the cardiovascular system, you are also working to forestall the types of diseases that strike the body, especially as we age. So cycling is a great way to avoid developing cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure, while reducing the chance to suffer a stroke or heart attack. Since regular cycling strengthens the heart muscles and improves heart functions to decrease your resting heart rate, it is an essential way to reduce the chance of developing heart diseases.
Interestingly, studies have also made a connection between regular cycling and reducing chances of developing certain types of cancer. Colon cancer, bowel cancer, and breast cancer have all been highlighted as illnesses that regular cycling can help to avoid.
Weight loss as one of the benefits of cycling
Though weight loss has often been the goal of people who take up sports, recently the focus has begun to shift away from weight loss and towards sustainable healthy goals. That’s largely because exercising does not always equate to weight loss. One reason for that is when you exercise more, you gain more muscle mass, which weighs more than fat. You could conceivably find yourself gaining weight after a stretch of consistent exercising. But don’t despair. Improving our body’s overall fitness is infinitely more important than reaching a specific weight goal.
Watching the scales when you are cycling frequently and at fairly intense levels is a good idea, though more as a way to gauge how much water weight you are losing so that you can replenish your water supply properly. Weigh yourself before a ride and then immediately after a ride, and the weight you have lost during the ride is primarily water weight. That’s how you’ll know how much water you will need to drink to rehydrate.
So when looking at what are the benefits of cycling everyday, losing weight very well could be a byproduct of the work you are doing. But overall fitness and not some random numerical weight loss should be the ultimate goal.
You may also be interested in our article about Winter bike essentials.
