One of my favorite summertime activities is biking – especially mountain biking! But whether you’re a road cyclist, a mountain biker, or you ride a trike, biking is great for your health! And in this guest article, Carter shares exactly why cycling is so great for your health!

Cycling is not only a fun activity, but it is also good for you. It is a great form of exercise that has many wonderful health benefits to offer. If you are thinking about taking up cycling for the first time or want to help convince someone that cycling is a great activity to improve overall health, then it is good to have some information to back you up. Here is a list of the top five ways that bike riding will improve the health of participants.

Relieving Stress with Two Wheels

This modern, fast paced world we live in builds up stress extremely rapidly. This stress is extremely damaging to us physically, mentally and emotionally. Regular exercise is one of the best ways to relieve the body of this built-up stress. Anytime that you are feeling that life is getting just a little too much to deal with, you can hop on the bicycle and pedal away the stress with a nice, long ride.

Get Legs That Will Be Talked About

Cycling is one of the best ways to build up strength and definition in the leg muscles. The repetitive pedalling motion of bike riding forces the glutes, calves and quadriceps muscles to fire over and over again. This constant work forces these muscles to grow very quickly. This ensures that people who regularly go cycling will have some of the most well shaped legs around. People that are regular bike riders have the kind of sculpted legs that people will notice and compliment.

Burning Calories and Fat

Cycling is one of the best physical workouts for burning off calories. A moderate pace on a ride will burn around 300 calories on average. An intense workout will boost this number up to 500 calories an hour. This may not seem like a lot, but it definitely adds up over time. Even at just the moderate rate of 300 calories an hour, cycling just 30 minutes a day would burn off eleven pounds of fat in a year. This shows how adding just a moderate cycling routine to a daily workout regimen can have wondrous effects on the body over time.

Boost Heart Health Through Pedalling

Riding your bicycle regularly is one of the best ways to improve the health of your heart. This has been demonstrated by a study conducted by the British Medical Association. They studied the rates of heart disease between two groups. The first group regularly cycled 20 miles a week, while the second group did not. The group that regularly cycled 20 miles a week were 50% less likely to suffer from heart disease. That is an amazing statistic when you consider that cycling 20 miles just takes a couple of hours at a very moderate pace.

Cycling Stimulates All the Muscles

While it is true that the leg muscles perform the majority of the work during a cycling workout, the rest of the body gets some exercise as well. The back and abdomen muscles are activated to stabilize the body and balance it on the bicycle. The arm muscles are engaged to support the body over the handlebars of the bike.

This means that the whole body of a cyclist will get toned over time. It still makes sense to perform other physical activities to balance the upper body strength with the lower body strength gained through cycling, but all things considered cycling is a great workout for the entire body.

Carter is an award winning personal trainer and cycling enthusiast. His passion for cycling began at a young age due to his father owning the biggest mechanical workshop for bicycles Brisbane has to offer. In his spare time, Carter enjoys mountain climbing, hang gliding, running marathons and playing his Xbox.

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