One of the best cardio workouts is bike riding. It can strengthen your lung and heart health, build muscle strength, reduce your stress levels, and improve your body's blood flow. Furthermore, cycling can also be an excellent way to help you lose weight, burn fat, and torch calories. However, to shed off some weight, there are a few things that you need to know for a better biking workout.
Here, we will take a look at a few biking strategies that can help optimize weight loss. Let us get started.
How to lose weight with biking?
Biking is believed to be an excellent low-impact aerobic workout. It helps improve your heart rate and causes less wear and tear to the joints, knees, and ankles than jogging or running.
It is also one of the best ways to shed some extra weight. It is because, with biking, you can shed off a good number of calories. So, if you wish to lose some weight by biking, here are some strategies that you can follow.
Biking betters the intensity
If you paddle around at a leisurely pace, it might not do much to bring in weight loss. However, if you push yourself and work harder and improve your riding intensity, you will surely make more progress, and that will help bring in weight loss and take you forward towards your goal. The general rule of thumb is the faster you cycle, the more calories you burn, says Daisy, a routine cyclist, who offers assignment help services online. It is possible because when you cycle faster, you expend more energy, leading to a higher calorie loss. This adds to the overall weight loss.
Studies suggest that moderate cycling for 60 minutes can burn about 300 calories. However, if you increase the intensity, you can surely burn more calories. Following a study by Harvard Health Letter, it was found that a 30-minute bike ride by a 155-pound person can result in a calorie loss of 298 calories if they bike at 12 to 13.9 mile per hour speed. Riding at a similar pace, a person weighing 185 pounds can lose about 355 calories.
However, if you go faster to around 14 to 15.9 miles per hour, you can burn around 372 calories only in 30 minutes. On the other hand, a 185-pound individual can lose about 444 calories at the same time.
Try high-intensity interval training (HIIT)
HIIT can be an extremely challenging workout to your body, says Georgia, who offers online finance homework help. It can help you lose weight and cut out body fat if that is what you seek. Primarily, HIIT involves a small burst of intense workout followed with an interval of low-intensity workout. With your bike, a HIIT workout can be like:
- Cycle as quickly as possible against a high resistance for about a minute.
- Follow it up with about two to three minutes of relaxed cycling with low resistance.
- You can repeat this pattern for the next 30 minutes then.
HIIT workout can help you burn higher calories in less time. It also betters your cardio fitness and results in fat loss. Following a study published in a leading Sports Journal, HIIT and continuous moderate cycling can result in cutting out body fat. As compared to moderate, steady exercises, HIIT offers a 28.5% better reduction in the fat mass.
The benefits do not end here. When your workout is over, and you stop pedaling, your metabolism remains engaged. It means that your body burns a higher degree of calories, even once the workout is done, and the body has returned to its resting, normal state.
Take it further
Anytime you feel that it is enough for the day, take it a little further. It is what is known as endurance training. Studies suggest that endurance training go a long way in helping you burn fat and boost weight loss. Anytime you try to build endurance, it is best to start slow, says Janet, who offers the best online python course. If you begin with just 15 to 20 minutes of cycling per session, you can slowly add a few minutes to every session until you take it to 150 minutes of cycling per week.
Do cross-training
Daniel, an online precalculus tutor, says that he enjoys biking, but always does it with some cross-training. If you, too, do not like being locked in just one activity, cross-training may be the thing for you. It can be an excellent way to add some variety to your workout with some alternating activities.
For instance, you can try biking one day, and then head over to the gym the next day and lift some weight.
ACE or the American Council on Exercise suggests that you should cycle at a moderate intensity for a minimum of 30 minutes every day to lose weight. If you want to shed more calories, you can take this time to be a little longer. ACE also recommends incorporating two activities into a cross-training session to boost weight loss.
For instance, you can bike for about 30 minutes, and then do some additional activity for 20 minutes.