Biking is very popular. Every day, people in the United States take nine million bike trips. In the spring of 2014, 67.3 million people said they had ridden a bike at least once during the previous 12 month. Nearly 33% of these people say they ride for recreation and 28% say they do it for health reasons. Whether you own your own bike or rely on bike rentals, cycling is a great way to have fun and get a good workout.
5 Tips to Get a Great Bike Workout:
- Be safe. If you are going to bike in the city, you need to be careful. The first thing you need to do is get a helmet if you do not have one. Many people neglect to get one when they are picking up their bike from the bike share kiosk or the bike rentals shop but it really is important. Next, check over your bike. Most of the times the people at the bike shop are very careful about how they maintain their bikes but you should make sure everything feels tight and in working order. Test out the brakes before you leave the bike rental location. You do not want to find out the brakes are having issues when you are flying down a hill at top speed.
- Keep track of your distance snd workouts. One of the great parts of bike workouts is the variety. To keep track of how far you went and what kind of workout you did, you should download an app for your phone. These can help you keep a good record of how far you went, what the course was like, how many calories you burned and how long you spent on the bike. When you keep track of your workouts, you can more efficiently increase your time to improve your fitness level. If you need encouragement, take photos of your bike ride and post them to your social media sites. This is one way you can share your bike ride and progress wiyh your friends and followers. Remember that most drivers are not looking for you so you need to look for them.
- Do not shy away from hills. If you live in a hilly area, after you have gotten your bicycle from the bike rentals place, ride it over to the hilly part of town. When you are riding up hill, try to pedal as fast as you can. Take a break as you coast down the hill. Repeat as often as you can. When you map out your rides, try to do the hills early in your route. This will allow you to get the most of the hills and increase your cardio workout.
- Vary your biking workout by standing up. You can get your back into your workout by pedaling standing up for at least part of your biking workout. If you are not used to biking this way, it may not feel as natural and therefore take you a little time to get used to it. Once you have gotten used to that kind of bike riding, do intervals of biking while standing. Aim for doing between 15 and 30 seconds standing. Try to work these intervals into your bike workouts.
- Bring music with you.andnbsp;While it is not safe to ride with ear buds in them, you can get bike accessories to hold your phone for when you are biking. Open Pandora or Slacker and play that while you are biking. This has the added benefit of alerting other people on your path that you are coming without using a horn.
If you do not have a bike and start to get tried of bike rentals, you can get an inexpensive bike of your own. Many bike stores have reasonable used bikes for sale. They can also help make sure any bike you buy is in great condition.
Biking is a great workout. It is a lot of fun and can be great for almost everyone. If you have trouble with your knees, biking can help you workout without being hard on your joints. If you have had injuries, this is one way to avoid those while getting great exercise.