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Bicycling For Fun and Fitness
Cross Training
Cross Training – Adding Cycling to Your Fitness Regimen
Health and fitness has become quite a big concern among people of this
generation. With the increasing rate heart diseases and diabetes, plus the
ballooning of obesity among today’s population, there is no wonder why people
are now so alarmed about their bodies. Such is why gyms are popping everywhere
like mushrooms. Health club memberships are now becoming as common as cable
subscriptions. While this growing interest for fitness is indeed good news, a
lot of people find it difficult to stick with their exercise routines. A lot of
people do get excited to exercise during the first few months of their gym
memberships, but within a year or so, their attendance are most likely to
dwindle. Many find fitness routines indeed boring and tedious. But this problem
may easily be solved by cross training, and merging fun activities, such as
cycling, to one’s regular fitness routine.
What Cross Training Is
Cross training is basically doing exercise in a variety of sport activities in
order to reach a particular training goal. Cross training involves the expansion
of one’s fitness routine to other types of activities that could help one
perform better with an existing regular fitness program. With cross training,
you no longer limit yourself to one particular type of exercise. This is seen to
be beneficial because it adds variety to a routine that can get boring in the
long run. Furthermore, cross training helps you increase the amount of
exercising you do without overtiring your muscles because you would be using
different sets of muscles with the alternative exercise.
Why Cycling is Good for Cross Training
Cycling is one of the most beneficial forms of exercise. First of all, cycling
is very good for one’s cardiovascular and respiratory system, since riding the
bike helps one to breathe heavily without getting out of breath. This is needed
for proper circulation of nutrient and oxygen-carrying blood that is required
for your regular fitness routine. Cycling has also been discovered to burn
around 300 calories an hour, making it a great aerobic component to accompany
your strength and resistance training. When combined as a cross training program
with your regular fitness regimen, cycling can improve your heart and body’s
function with some welcome side effects of weight and fat loss.
Cycling has also been seen to improve people’s mood, reducing stress and
depression. This could help you to motivate yourself even further with your main
form of exercise. Since cycling is a total body workout, it helps your body to
gain coordination and strength at the same time. This could further enhance your
performance with your other fitness activities, helping you to achieve greater
results than you would if you were doing just one kind of exercise. Cycling as a
cross training supplement could lead to your greater well being and a better
physical, as well as mental, function.
The health benefits of cycling are so great that according to a study by the
Department of Transport, just a few weeks of short distance cycling could
elevate one’s aerobic fitness by as much as 11 to 17 percent. The leg strength
developed by people who cycle has also been seen to protect them from bone
injuries later in life. Cycling, even for starters, could provide drastic health
improvements that could well be carried out as one ages.
How to merge cycling into one’s fitness routine
Cycling is not at all difficult to include in your regular fitness routine. In
the first place, you do not really have to learn how to cycle anymore unless you
have never ridden a bike when you were still a child. If you are engaged in a
weight-training program, chances are, your program requires you to do some
cardiovascular workout at least twice or thrice a week. Usually people go about
this by running on a treadmill. But that could get really boring. So instead of
running endlessly without getting nowhere, why not try hopping on to your bike
and exploring your neighborhood. Just a thirty-minute ride would already fulfill
your cardiovascular requirements. But sure enough, you’d find this even too
short a time to roam around your town. Of course it is advised to take it
gradually, but as you progress with your cross training, you may be able to
increase your cycling time to as long as your body can handle.
Cross training with cycling can be a great way to supplement your existing
fitness routine. With great benefits of cycling, you are sure to improve your
health in no time at all.
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MSN
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Google
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Yahoo!
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