Why cycling?
Physical activity is essentially meant for human beings. You need to be physically active to be fit and healthy (that’s too obvious). Nevertheless, regularly engaging in standard activities like cycling, walking, and running can help you protect from serious diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, mental illness, etc.
Cycling is a common form of exercise for kids and young adults. Well, the kids usually ride for fun and enjoyment rather than doing it as means of exercise. However, one who has cycling as a part of everyday life can certainly be benefitted in many ways.
Those who don’t have time to exercise can ride to work or shops which can easily be time-efficient, and also they would have their fair share of routine exercise. It is one of the best ways to reduce your problems that are linked to a sedentary lifestyle.
Well, it is considered a low-impact aerobic exercise, however, it largely depends on the intensity of how you do it – transport, casual activity, or for competitive purposes; nonetheless, it’s great at all levels and will keep you active most of the time.
Cycling For Health and Fitness - Benefits
It generally takes 1-3 hours of cycling a week to see noticeable improvements in your health.
Some of the benefits include:
1) Easy and low impact: Since it is a low-impact aerobic exercise, it tends to have less strain and injuries on you than other types of exercises. Moreover, it does not require high levels of skill to learn. It’s easy for most people and once you learn, there is no going back.
2) Muscle workout: It uses all the major muscle groups to work out, therefore toning and strengthening your muscles.
3) Stamina and endurance: Cycling increases stamina as well as endurance without damaging any muscle tissues. It can be a great workout if you’re into aerobic sports such as track athletics, football, tennis, swimming, and so forth.
4) Weight management: It helps in reducing body fat levels, consequently managing your weight. In addition, it also improves your metabolism, which means you can easily burn calories even while at rest.
5) Mental health: Cycling can ease your feelings of stress, anxiety, and other related problems. While cycling needs you to focus on the road, this can be helpful to take your mind off of everyday mental chatter.
At the same time, it also increases your awareness and concentration of your surroundings, providing a sense of mindfulness.
6) Core and posture: It works on your back and abdominal muscles giving you a massive core workout. A strong core always maintains your spine upright which is needed while cycling as well as in other aspects of life.
An upright spine supports your spinal cord, provides stability, helps in coordination, and improves overall balance.
7) Immune system: Aerobic exercise such as cycling makes you want to breathe continuously. This improves the efficiency of your body’s cardiovascular system. As you breathe intensely, oxygen gets provided to every part of your body, thereby enhancing your immune response and overall immunity.
Cycling For Certain Health Ailments:
If you want to prevent any future health concerns or manage existing conditions, doing some sort of exercise, yoga, or as simple as daily walking is essentially needed. Cycling is the simplistic approach to deal with them, thus considered as huge support or help.
1) Help with cancer: If you already have cancer or recovering from it, cycling can be a great addition to your health plan. It reduces the risk of certain types of cancer and helps to improve the quality of your life.
2) Obesity or overweight: Being overweight is very common in this day and age due to several factors including a sedentary lifestyle, bad diet, lack of physical activity and not to mention genetics.
Research suggests that one should burn 2000 calories a week for healthy weight management. Regular cycling burns about 300 calories per hour. So it is one of the fantastic and time-efficient ways to control obesity.
3) Cardiovascular disease: Regular cycling improves blood circulation by strengthening heart muscles, and stimulating the heart rate and lungs, hence lowering your risk of heart diseases. It also keeps checking on your blood pressure levels.
4) Mental disorders: As mentioned earlier, cycling can take your awareness to the next level, in turn promoting your concentration and focus. Research had been rolled out about the effect of cycling on cognitive function and well-being in adults. ( 1 )