WHY YOU SHOULD RIDE EVERY DAY
Thinking about staying off the bike for a while? You may want to reconsider that...
The benefits of a good ride are immediate. Within 24 hours, your blood pressure drops, your blood sugar improves, your metabolism burns hotter, and your mood gets better. Everyone needs a rest now and then; but store your bike for too long, and those hard- earned benefits slip away – some, almost immediately. Here are some really good reasons to keep on rolling. ON THE DAY… YOU BECOME MOODY Within minutes of starting exercise, neural activity lights up your brain, which builds your brain and improves your mood. Brain chemistry researcher J. David Glass reports that the minute hamsters start running on their wheel, they get a 100- to 200% increase in serotonin – the same chemical that antidepressants signal to fight depression. Deny your body that fix for even a day, and your mood will slump.
Your metabolism also stagnates. Riding revs your metabolism five- fold above its resting rate at your desk job: you lose between 1 700 and 2 100 kilojoules burned for every hour you skip. That adds up to 500g of fat a week you could have lost – but didn’t. ONE WEEK LATER… YOUR HEALTH TAKES A HIT Cycling prompts your body to release hormones that make your blood vessels more compliant. It also pumps high levels of blood through your system, which helps keep your arteries and veins supple. Research generally finds that regular cycling can lower your blood pressure about 8 (diastolic) to 10 (systolic) points in a month. This starts rising again after just one week out of the saddle.
By now, your blood sugar will start to surge too. When you’re riding regularly, your hungry muscles suck up the sugar that enters your bloodstream. After just five days of downtime, that post-meal sugar just stays in your blood, which over time can lead to heart disease and diabetes. What’s more, the enzymes that mop up fat and sugar in your bloodstream start shutting down when you’re sedentary, so both blood cholesterol and blood sugar rise. TWO TO FOUR WEEKS LATER… YOUR FITNESS TAKES A DIVE Regular cycling builds blood volume and your body’s ability to use the oxygen it carries. After just two to four weeks off the bike, your blood volume plummets nearly 10%. Your stroke volume (the amount of blood your heart can push out per beat) drops 12%. Your mitochondria, which act as your body’s energy- producing furnaces, start to shrink from disuse. The end result: Your V02 max – the benchmark of fitness – declines 6%. MORE THAN ONE MONTH LATER… YOU START GETTING FAT As your metabolism and your muscles’ fatburning activity both dwindle, your fat stores rise. A study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research
found that swimmers who stopped training for five weeks put on weight, increased their waistlines, and bumped up their body fat by 12% just five weeks after leaving the pool.
It doesn’t take much to halt this rapid decline. Just going out for a brisk ride once or twice a week can help you maintain your hard-earned fitness gains.