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Good health is often acquired through various process types, from simple to more complex.
By just following a healthy diet, making sure you get enough sleep or including stationary bike workouts, you will already be well on your way to becoming a lot healthier. If you are hoping to become healthy and fit, you can achieve these goals with a stationary bike.
If you are not sure how long you should be exercising on one of these bikes, keep reading to find out more.
How Long Should You Ride Your Stationary Bike?
Most experts agree that you should be spending between 30 to 40 minutes on a stationary bike at least 3 to 5 days a week. As you improve your endurance and strength you can work your way up to 60 minutes a day.
If you are interested in losing weight, increase the time you are spending on cardio exercises. This will also depend on your overall health goals and your body weight. 10 minutes on a stationary bike can already help you to burn between 40 to 80 calories.
Riding on stationary bikes is a bit different from riding a bicycle. Exercise bikes won’t be taking you to different places as an outdoor bike does, yet they will still provide a host of healthy benefits.
A stationary bike may look like very basic equipment, but the health benefits that it can provide are pretty incredible. This is why it is important to work out how long you should be exercising on one of these bikes.
In addition to the many health benefits that it can provide, a stationary bike is also one of the easiest machines to use, regardless of your age, weight, or gender.
Top Health Benefits You Can Achieve By Cycling 15 to 20 Minutes A Day
Everyone prefers to exercise in the most efficient way possible. Sometimes it has more to do with the enjoyment of riding, but rather maximizing your results while minimizing the time you are spending doing it. But can you enjoy the many health benefits of only cycling 15 to 20 minutes a day? And is 15 minutes enough?
Any type of exercise is far better than not exercising at all. Keeping this in mind is essential for any person that is still new to this form of exercise. Enough is something relative and usually depends on the individual that is exercising, the exercise types they are performing, and finally the intensity at which they are doing it.
Health, age, and weight also play a very important role. The CDC and the NHS suggest 150 minutes of (moderate exercise) every week, or 75 minutes of (intensive or vigorous exercise) every week.
If you had to break this down into a daily amount it would work out to be around 21 minutes of “moderate activity” every day or 10 minutes of “intensive activity” every day.
A moderate workout on a stationary bike would be a gentle ride, but still enough effort in order to raise your heart rate. Intensive cycling may include more challenging indoor or outdoor rides or even taking a spinning class.
If you are aiming to maximize your time, you may want to incorporate HIIT (high-intensity interval training) into your routines. This involves bursts of short intensive exercise that will maximize your results when you push yourself to the limits over shorter sessions as opposed to a slower-paced longer workout.
You may already know about the “general” health benefits linked to exercising for 15 to 20 minutes daily, but in this post, we are looking more specifically at cycling.
- Cycling Will Boost Your Heart Health
Cycling is an excellent cardiovascular option for people that cannot or prefer not to run. It is also a low-impact and high-intensity workout, making it suitable for moderate sessions or HIIT workouts. Several studies have suggested that cycling every day for 15 to 20 minutes is usually very beneficial when it comes to heart health.
One of these studies conducted a comparison between 2 groups involving indoor bikes. The first group performed a 2-minute warm-up, followed by a 20-second sprint, followed by a 2-minute slower ride.
This routine was repeated over 10 minutes. The second group rode at a steady pace for 45 minutes. At the end of the study after 12 weeks, both groups achieved a 20% increase in their cardiovascular endurance.
This study proved that intense shorter bursts offer the same benefits for the heart as the longer workouts.
Science Daily also wrote about a study that discovered that HIIT workouts improve cardio-respiratory fitness close to 50% more than stretched out and longer moderate-intensity cycling or running.
15-minute workouts are often more beneficial when compared to 45-minute workouts at a more moderate and slower pace. This is excellent news for those that find it hard to find the time to include cycling sessions into their daily routine.
Intensity plays a significant role when it comes to maximizing your benefits when cycling for a shorter period. Vigorous doesn’t involve going all-out, but try to push yourself further when you can.
All types of exercise offer health benefits. But according to a study in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal, 75 minutes of high-intensity or vigorous activity every week has the potential to decrease the risks of cardiovascular diseases and getting cancer. This works out to only 12.5 minutes daily.
- Improve Your Brain Health
Cardio and cycling are clearly connected, but you might not be aware that cycling (even for short durations), is also great for your brain. In fact, just a short cycle session of 15-minutes a day can also help to improve memory.
Bicylcing.com gave a report on a study that indicated that cycling has the potential to enhance memory in older participants and that it has been recommended that it is one of the best ways to lower the risks associated with developing dementia.
- Cyclists Tend To Sleep Better
Sleep is vital for your overall health. This involves more than just how many hours of sleep you are getting but also your sleep quality. Poor or interrupted sleep is attributed to many health issues that range from depression to obesity, heart disease, and dementia.
Sleep also helps to keep our hormone levels in check. We feel more stressed or anxious when we do not get enough sleep. Many people are prone to eating more and becoming irritable or finding it difficult to concentrate.
Cortisol also releases if you are not getting quality sleep, and this is one of the stress hormones that make it harder for you to achieve a healing sleep. This often turns into a vicious and debilitating cycle.
Bike Radar reported on a study from Standford University where sufferers of insomnia that lead inactive lifestyles participated in a study where they took up cycling. At the end of the experiment, the researchers concluded that the participants started finding that it took them a lot faster to go to sleep and most were able to get in an extra hour of sleep each night.
- Cycling To Live Longer
The European Journal of Cardiology published a study that studied a group of participants (over 12 years). They discovered that even the individuals that were only taking a 15-minute brisk walk every day were 22% (less likely to die) over the 12 years of this study compared to participants that were not exercising at all.
You could apply this logic to either a 15-minute indoor bike ride or a 15-minute outdoor bike ride. What was interesting about the study is the fact that these results don’t only apply to vigorous workout routines.
This study was not based on HIIT workouts but rather on brisk walks. Steady and slow workouts on a bike work just as well.
The British Medical Journal also published a study that discovered that adults that spend around 8 to 10 hours every day watching television on their couches could be mitigating a few of the largest risks of this type of lifestyle if they exercised at a vigorous to moderate pace for just 11 -minutes each day.
- Cycling To Maintain Your Weight
If you are happy with your current weight or you have reached your desired weight goal, cycling is one of the best ways to maintain your weight. It is not always about getting into your favorite pair of jeans or fitting into a new bikini.
Staying in a weight range that is healthy for your age, body type, and gender can help you to enjoy a better quality of life while supporting much better health.
Indoor and outdoor cycling offers an easy way to burn calories and fat and can make it much easier for you to maintain your weight, regardless of what that actually means to you.
According to Harvard Health Publishing, a person that weighs 155 pounds should be burning around 173-calories over 20 -minutes of moderately intense exercise.
173 calories is an excellent starting point. If you have not yet reached your desired weight goal, you may want to add longer or more intense cycling sessions into your routine or adopt a HIIT routine. Classes are also an excellent choice for those looking to maximize their calorie burn.
Adding other types of exercise such as aerobics, walking, or swimming can also be very helpful. Cycling for 15 to 20 minutes daily offers some impressive health benefits. The intensity and effort of how you cycle will typically dictate how far your benefits will go.
However, even a short 15-minute session will benefit your overall health.
Starting small may also help you when it comes to engaging in more consistency when it comes to your fitness routines, which then becomes easier to extend into a longer routine.
15-minutes may involve a quick ride to your local shop and then back home. It could also involve using a stationary bike at your gym or at home while you watch one of your favorite TV shows. Regardless of your fitness goals, always remember the saying “any exercise is better than none at all”.
Conclusion
Now that you are armed with more information on how long you should be spending on your stationary bike, you need to realize that should be practicing discipline and perseverance in order to reach your fitness goals.
When it comes to achieving a healthy body and mind, you need to practice self-control.
Staying healthy and fit is not something you should be compromising on.
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