How much do you know about the benefits of cycling?

As an outdoor fitness exercise, cycling has many benefits. If you don’t know it yet, it’s not too late to learn them now.

1. Improve your fat loss efficiency

Like walking, running, swimming and other aerobic exercises, cycling is also a good choice – cycling will accelerate the burning of your calories and use up the fat stored by your body, so as to help you achieve your fat loss goals more efficiently.

And compared to running, cycling causes less delayed onset muscle soreness. The probability of injury and inflammation gets lower, so it is more suitable for heavy-weight people and fitness beginners.

2. Strengthen your cardiopulmonary function

During this exercise, the body will adjust its metabolism, accelerate the inhalation of oxygen and the discharge of waste products, the contraction of the heart muscle will be more powerful, and the elasticity of the blood vessel wall will become stronger, thus greatly improving the respiratory function of the lungs. Bodybuilding tycoon Arnold Schwarzenegger likes to ride very much, especially in his elder age, it can be seen that the benefits are self-evident.

Of course, changes in factors such as slope, riding speed, and wind speed will have different effects on riding, so the heart rate level will also change accordingly. The steep slope, fast speed, and high wind speed can bring about the violent beating of the heart.

3. Increase Your Muscle Strength

Cycling focuses on the movement of the legs, especially the thighs and calves. Constantly pedaling the feet to drive the wheels forward can effectively improve the strength of the quadriceps, gluteus maximus, hamstrings, and calf muscles, and strengthen the explosive power of the lower limbs.

At the same time, when riding, the body does not need to bear the weight of itself like running, which is more friendly to the joints, and can improve the stability of the hip, knee, and ankle joints, and allow the lower extremity joint ligaments to remain young.

4. Enrich your spiritual world

As an outdoor sport, cycling can not only exercise your body but also please your mind.

On the one hand, this kind of pleasure comes from the secretion of adrenaline when cycling, so the heart rate and blood flow are accelerated, and the body becomes full of energy; on the other hand, cycling can go farther than walking, allowing you to appreciate different scenery, brings spiritual satisfaction.

The process of cycling can also increase the blood supply to the brain, and improve your control, reflexes, and intelligence, so as to make the brain healthier. So from the perspective of exercising intelligence, cycling is also good exercise.

Overall, cycling is considered good exercise. When it gets sunny, it is a nice choice to go out for a ride!

Read more: Why sports make us younger than others?