What are the main benefits of cycling?

Although opinions towards the activity are naturally subjective, it’s not uncommon for cyclists to report feelings of satisfaction and euphoria when they’ve conquered a steep hill climb or exhilaration and care-free unbridled joy at times where they’re whizzing effortlessly down an incline with the wind in their hair. But what are the main benefits of cycling, particularly for health and wellbeing? Read on to find out.

With the NHS recommending that healthy adults aged 19-64 do strengthening activities that work all the major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms) at least twice a week and at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week, or at least 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity a week, cycling helps tick some of these boxes (our Exercise to energise: how to move more everyday article looks beyond these guidelines):

Physical health benefits of cycling

1. Builds strength: The low impact aerobic exercise enhances the performance of your lower body and helps you strengthen those leg muscles – specifically, your calves, hamstrings, glutes, and quads. Depending on your gear selection each time you push the pedals, it can act as a form of resistance training that contributes to muscle growth in your legs, all without putting too much pressure on your joints.
   
   
2. Boosts cardiovascular health: Like all aerobic exercise, cycling can strengthen your heart muscle, improving its ability to pump blood to your lungs and throughout your body. As your red blood cells carry oxygen, this enables more oxygen to be transported around your body, becoming more efficient in the process.
   
   
3. Bolsters your balance, posture and coordination: Your gait is the way in which you walk and is unique to each individual. With gait disorders becoming more common as we age and being associated with regular falls, maintaining good balance is important. The mere act of conventional cycling is to stabilise your body and keep your bike from toppling over.
   
   A small study of women aged 65 and above who did 20-minute sessions of stationary cycling, three times per week for eight weeks, found significant improvements in their gait and balance. Furthermore, a different study, looking at 32 chronic stroke patients, found that adding in a 30-minute session of stationary cycling exercise on top of their pre-existing 30-minute rehabilitation programme, also saw significant improvements in gait and balance, compared to rehabilitation alone.
   
   
4. Body fat reduction: Cycling regularly in the form of spinning cycling workouts over six weeks, particularly at high intensity, was seen as an effective way to lose weight and reduce body fat ratio among a small study of 12 sedentary women aged between 32 and 47.
   
   
5. Brightens your morning: Kicking your morning off with a healthy exercise like cycling can make you feel awake by increasing your blood circulation, and raising your endorphin levels, which can relieve pain, reduce stress and improve your mood. It may also give you satisfaction that you’ve had a productive start. Added to this, a morning session of moderate-intensity exercise improved the cognition of older adults, when the time they spent sitting afterwards was also broken up with intervals of light-intensity walking.
   
   Should being active earlier the next day be a priority or you, exercising at 7am may progress your body clock enough so that you feel refreshed sooner after waking.

Suitable for all levels

Whether for recreation or commuting, beginner or competitive, the beauty of cycling is that it can be as intense as you like, depending on the route you choose. A systematic literature review uncovered evidence that electrically assisted bicycles, which, for the study, had to have pedals and require pedalling for electric assistance to be given, provided moderate intensity physical activity. This was lower than the intensity supplied by conventional bikes but higher than that granted by walking. Additionally, there was moderate evidence that e-cycling can improve cardiovascular fitness in those who were physically inactive.

So, if you’re a novice, unsure about riding into the cycling world, you could test the waters with an e-bike and still reap some of the fitness rewards.

The preventative health benefits of cycling

Part of our work at Evergreen Life is sharing evidence-backed information to help equip our readers and app users to make healthy choices and live as well as possible for as long as possible. That is, we focus on disease prevention, where possible. The good news is that frequent cycling avoids an inactive lifestyle.

A large Swedish study involving both middle-aged men and women found benefits of cycling to work. Using this mode of transport to commute was associated with lower chances of cardiovascular risk factors, which included obesity, high blood pressure and impaired glucose tolerance, compared to those whose commute didn’t feature cycling. The research concluded biking could serve as a preventative measure for these conditions.

It isn’t just the Swiss who found advantages. A large, mixed gendered Danish study of middle-aged and older adults also demonstrated that leisure time cycling was associated with lower coronary heart disease risk and suggests it could be a valuable prevention measure for the illness.

The middle aged and elderly aren’t the only ones to benefit from cycling’s preventative advantages. Researchers of a large Indian retrospective study looking at non-insulin dependent diabetics aged 18-40 found that regular cycling led to a reduction in blood sugar, pressure and weight and encouraged it to be promoted as an ideal method of exercise for this cohort.

Furthermore, a European cohort study of just over 7,400 people living with diabetes found cycling was associated with lowering the mortality rates of people living with the condition by at least 24% when compared with those who didn’t cycle. When the exercise habit was sustained over five years, it was associated with at least a 35% lower mortality risk, in contrast to non-cyclists.

The cognitive health benefits of cycling

It’s not unusual for some cyclists to experience a sense of freedom when they go out for a ride. Being preoccupied with the present moment and their surroundings (such as traffic!) can hone their concentration, whilst distracting them from any worries they had before they got on their bike.

Always ensure you wear a helmet, are familiar with the Highway Code and keep alert and aware of other road users.

A study of 100 adults aged 50-83 found that cycling three times a week for at least 30-minutes per ride improved cognitive health, both in participants that used a conventional pedal bike and those who used an e-bike. The mental health e-bike riders also improved compared to non-cycling participants.

A highlight finding was that sometimes the e-bike group showed similar, if not higher, cognitive health improvements than the conventional cyclists’ group, indicating it may not just be the physical activity that contributes to mental wellbeing enhancements, but engagement with the outdoor environment too. Indeed, we know that there are significant health benefits to making sure we get enough natural light and exposure to vitamin D from sunlight, (whilst being mindful to avoid sunburn!) which can help support our mental health.

Financial and environmental benefits of cycling

As this overview of active transportation (travelling on foot, by bicycle or other non-motorised ways) points out, active transportation, as a daily physical activity, is less expensive compared to motor vehicle use. Biking can even be cheaper than using public transport, once you’ve invested in a good quality bike and safety equipment like a helmet and high-visibility clothing, that is. To this end, some social enterprises and charities offer cost-effective refurbished and serviced second-hand bikes, or ‘libraries’ where you can hire a bicycle for a short period, for example, if you wanted to try the sport out.

Cycling can also alleviate traffic congestion and mitigate climate change. If we look after the environment and world we live in, we also take care of our long-term health at the same time.

Despite the many benefits of cycling, it’s worth bearing in mind that where you cycle could pose a health risk, with bike path dust in very busy cities in Poland being found to be heavily contaminated with zinc, cadmium and lead, mainly from non-exhaust car emissions. Zinc and cadmium were the most bioavailable, posing hazards to humans and the environment. The researchers concluded that, where possible, consider cycling away from heavily trafficked routes. They also encouraged the physical removal of dust by wet sweeping to limit dust re-spreading.

Reviewed by:

Anna Keeble MA BA Head of Content and Wellbeing Expert

Dr Claire Marie Thomas MRCGP DFSRH DTMH DipNLP MBChB BMedSci Medical Expert

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