It’s like learning to ride a bicycle. Once you regard exercise as obligatory sweating, it’s hard to forget the notion.
You know it’s good for you, keeps the waistline trim, maybe chases away stress, so no way are you going to stop working out. If it hurts, if it’s boring, that’s a reasonable price to pay for keeping your body fat percentage (and clothing size) in a respectable range.
But, in fact, your bicycle riding skills may be just the thing to put the brakes on this misconception about fitness. Getting exercise can be fun and painless and still physically worthwhile.
“Cycling is an efficient way to gain cardiovascular benefits and work the large muscle groups in the body, especially the legs,” said Melinda Moore, an exercise physiologist and researcher at the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. “This building of large muscles is the best way to lose or maintain weight. Larger muscles require more fuel and will subsequently burn more fat.”
Best of all, getting on a bike eliminates the drudgery of exercise, especially in cyclist-friendly Chicagoland. You tend to do it more and gain a cumulative effect. Unlike runners, who will typically burn more calories per minute, cyclists often feel they can ride all day.
“It’s a non-weight bearing activity,” explained Moore. “Running means a lot of pounding on the body. Cycling is easier on the joints, particularly the knees.”
“I know cycling is good for my fitness,” said Steve Kramer, 31, a software developer who lives in the city. “But mostly I just enjoy riding and seeing new places.”
Kramer coordinates the ride-line for the Chicago Cycling Club, an organization that sponsors weekend morning outings at 8:30, meeting at the clock tower at the Sydney Marovitz (formerly Waveland) golf course between March and October. Saturdays are reserved for longer training rides, usually about 40 miles, but a few times each year the group covers a “century” or 100-mile distance. Sunday rides are more leisurely, slower and shorter.
“We pick a destination for a group breakfast or maybe explore a new neighborhood in the city,” said Kramer. “I keep aware of how hard I am going at it,” Kramer noted. “What’s important is to be conscious of my heart rate.”
Your own target heart rate is determined by first calculating a maximum heart rate (220 minus your age), then deciding upon a percentage of the maximum. People who ride at 75 to 80 percent target heart rate will be working at an advanced aerobic capacity, while 55 to 65 percent is considered by some exercise scientists as optimal for fat-burning. In any case, a beginner should first begin cycling at a comfortable pace (no difficulty in breathing or holding a conversation), and anyone with a potential medical risk should consult a physician.
“You don’t want to go too hard,” said Moore, “but it’s also tempting to stop pedaling and glide when you are cycling outdoors. This decreases the value of a workout.”
Besides any laboring you might experience during a ride, muscle soreness is another way to check if you are overdoing it. Physiologists say you might have some aches peaking about 48 hours after cycling, but there should never be pain, and any soreness should be gone after four or five days. A likely sore point will be the front thigh muscles, the quadriceps. If your knees hurt, that’s a sure indicator you are pushing too hard.
But “tooling around” isn’t enough for fitness benefits. You need to intensify or lengthen your ride beyond a gentle tour around town.
Challenging your body during a workout is perhaps easier in cycling than most physical activities.
“The neat thing about today’s line of new bikes is the potential for shifting gears,” said Moore. “You don’t have to push yourself as much as the bike pushes you.”
Moore, a competitive cyclist, said each rider needs to play around with the gears to find resistance levels that work for them.
“So many people stay in one gear, usually the same one the bike was in when they bought it,” she said. “I suggest you find a gear that first allows you to ride at moderate intensity for 20 to 30 minutes. On subsequent rides, either increase the gear levels for a harder workout or increase your length of the ride to 45 minutes, then an hour.”
There are more ways to boost your bike workout. One approach is riding uphill, which burns nearly twice as many calories as riding on a flat surface. You also can shift into a more difficult gear while riding on level ground or with a riding partner who is less fit. Joining a competitive cycling club is another idea (call the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation at 312-427-3325 for a referral in the northeastern Illinois region).
What’s more, cycling can help you find the seemingly elusive time to fit exercise into your busy schedule. As a mode of transportation, it can provide a workout while going to the store, meeting friends for coffee, taking the kids to the park or commuting to work.
“I ride to the office every day,” said Ben Gomberg, the city’s first-ever bicycling coordinator, who started his job of advocating cyclist rights and improving the city’s bike paths in Mayor Daley’s administration in February.
“Cycling gets me to work in about the same door-to-door time as riding the el (from his North Side neighborhood). I take a quicker route in the mornings, but every evening I find a different way home to explore neighborhoods and check out the sights. All the while, I am getting my exercise rather than hurrying off to the gym after work.”
