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Cardio, or cardiovascular exercise, is any physical activity that gets your heart rate high and increases blood circulation.
The main goal of performing cardio is to shed off excess fat since you’re moving your body. Among various forms of cardio, some forms are better than others in terms of fat loss.
But all of them has one major benefit; creating a caloric deficit, which helps you lose excess weight.
One of the best ways to do cardio is cycling. It has various benefits that improve not only your cardiovascular health but overall health as well. So just how does cycling help your body? We’ll look at five of the biggest cardio health benefits of cycling below.
1) Increases Heart Rate
Raising your heart rate while exercising provides various short and long-term health benefits. Depending on the intensity, cycling will increase your heart rate to a higher number. As your heart rate goes up, more blood can flow to your body. Thus providing your cells with maximum oxygen and nutrition.
Exercises that increase your heart rate pays off very well. It keeps you healthy and lets your brains work properly. Provides better distribution of nutrition throughout your body, it leaves no cells uncared for.
A higher heart rate will result in no blood clots or plaque in your veins. Thus lowering the risk of getting a heart disease.
Physical activities that improve circulation enables your muscles to perform to the maximum of their ability. More blood flow helps reduce muscle cramps, and with faster recovery and sore muscles.
A small increase in your heart rate will burn more calories, most of which will come from fat. Even light exercise works well. So in this case, cycling is one of the best choices. Moreover, exercise requires our bodies to produce energy by burning fat or stored carbohydrates known as glycogen.
Cycling improves your stamina, or in other words, energy levels. Repeated cycling sessions with rest in between will result in easier recovery of your heart health, with many people also taking CBD to help recover faster. And your body in the meantime will get chance to repair itself. And as a result, after every session, your overall health is improved bit by a bit.
2) Strengthens the Cardiovascular System
The cardiovascular system is made up of your heart and blood vessels and it is responsible for transporting nutrients and oxygen throughout your body. As cycling increase your resting heart rate, there comes a stress on your whole cardiovascular system.
And, any form of physical activity strengthens your whole cardiovascular system.
Aerobic exercises require more capacity to hold oxygen in the blood, known as aerobic capacity. With cycling, you have a longer period of time spent in keeping more oxygen intake to maintain the output.
The cardiovascular system maintains the blood flow amount to various parts of the body. While cycling, the muscles send stress signal to our heart. And it reacts by sending more blood to the required areas.
This effect stays for many hours even after your session ends. Thus your body can get more oxygen for longer periods of time.
3) Increases Metabolism
All forms of cardio immediately boost your metabolism, be it walking or running. Our working muscles need a lot of energy to function properly. And the energy comes from cells.
Cycling is a good form of aerobic exercise that accelerates your metabolic resting state to become highly active. It provides your muscles with fuel that they need.
The effect of cycling on metabolism stays for long hours after each session. Depending on the intensity of your session, the period of time it will stay will vary.
The effect happens because, like any other exercise forms, cycling will send your muscle cells a signal that there is a different stress or stimulus, responding to an increase in your metabolism.
It helps you build more muscle mass and strengthen them. Especially around your glutes, quads, and calves. As a result, you’ll burn more calories with more muscles
4) Moderate-Intensity!
It is a form of moderate-intensity exercise. Unlike other high-intensity exercises, it burns fewer calories a minute and it’s easy on your joints. It is a good thing, as this is one of the best forms of exercise for obese people.
Swimming or high-intensity running is very effective, but for overweight people, it isn’t easy. And, will make their heart rate go sky-high in the first place. So they can start with cycling and increase their intensity with time.
In fact, if you’re obese, high-intensity training can put you at a greater risk of illness or injury. Unless they’re done in a controlled and medically supervised environment, it can be dangerous for people with high blood pressure or heart diseases.
Most of the obese people, especially women have an aversion towards exercise because it is physically distressing. In that case, doing exercise while cycling with a lightweight bike could be the best option. It is easy on their bodies and especially joints, burns lot of calories, and it is fun.
So for people who want to shed off excess pounds, but impeded by their weight, can start cycling. If you like casual biking, then here are some good cruiser bikes for female.
5) Reduces Cholesterol
High amounts of bad ‘LDL’ cholesterol poses a risk of cardiovascular disease. Cycling can lower your total cholesterol levels. Also, improve your good ‘HDL’ cholesterol and reduce bad ‘LDL’ cholesterol in your bloodstream. One of the reasons for the boom in cardiovascular diseases is high amounts of bad cholesterol in the blood. As you reduce that, you reduce the risk of not only the cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
With exercise, the Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL) converts into bile and excreted. So the more the exercise, more the amount of LDL being expelled from your body.
What’s more?
Exercise increases the size of lipoproteins. Larger and denser lipoproteins are better for you whereas small, less dense ones are dangerous.
Because the small ones can squeeze into heart linings and stay there. And making your heart prone to more cholesterol. But with vigorous activities such as cycling, you can easily avoid that too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sophie Elise is a passionate cyclist, author, and blogger. She is very passionate about writing on different types of women’s bikes, accessories, health, fitness and more. She regularly writes on sportsly.net.
