The bike is a great fitness tool, and cycling for weight loss doesn’t have to be complicated. Combining cycling, structured training, and a healthy diet can pave the way for increased performance by dropping the pounds and increasing your fitness. In a world where maintaining a healthy weight and a vibrant lifestyle is a shared aspiration, the simple pleasure of cycling offers an exciting avenue for achieving both.
Introduction
Mountain biking offers an exciting and effective way to achieve weight loss and improve overall health. This article explores the numerous benefits of mountain biking for weight loss, delving into practical strategies, expert insights, and real-life success stories. We'll cover everything from calorie burning and muscle building to the mental and emotional benefits of hitting the trails.
The Science of Cycling and Weight Loss
Cycling is a powerful ally for weight loss through a combination of calorie burning and metabolic enhancements. While riding, your body will draw the stored fat and carbohydrates to fuel your efforts. As your heart rate increases and muscles are pushed, your metabolism boosts, continuing to burn calories even after you’ve dismounted. Furthermore, cycling is a muscle-building endeavor. As you pedal, your leg muscles are engaged extensively. This muscle activation not only burns calories but also contributes to your long-term weight loss efforts. So, cycling is not just about burning calories during the ride but also about the lasting changes it brings to your metabolism and body composition.
Riding can increase your activity level, burn calories, improve heart health, and grow your fitness. Aside from those benefits, riding a bike is fun! The key to losing weight isn’t just riding. An old adage says you can’t out-train a bad diet, and experience lends proof to this idea. Cycling performance and weight seemingly go hand in hand, and for good reasons. Pure watts and aerodynamics reign supreme as long as the road is flat. A key cycling metric is your power-to-weight ratio and is expressed as watts at FTP divided by body weight in kilograms (w/kg).
Benefits of Mountain Biking for Weight Loss
There are numerous benefits of cycling for weight loss. Dusting off your two-wheeler and going for a mountain bike ride is an excellent way to move your body, get your heart rate up, and explore your own backyard! It’s no secret that a physical activity like mountain biking can lead to health benefits. Going on a mountain bike ride has many different benefits, affecting your physical and mental health. Mountain biking is a great form of cardio exercise and it can increase muscle strength, improve balance & coordination, contribute to weight loss & management, and positively impact stress and anxiety.
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Cardio Exercise
Mountain biking provides a great source of cardio exercise because it is a sustained physical activity that gets your heart pumping and increases your breathing rate. When you hop on a mountain bike and begin riding, you use large muscle groups in your legs to power the bike up hills, over rough terrain, around corners, and to stabilize your body when biking downhill. As you ride, your heart and lungs have to work harder to supply your muscles with oxygen, which causes your heart rate & breathing to increase. Mountain biking is generally considered a moderate to high-intensity cardio exercise. When riding on flat or rolling terrain, you can expect moderate-intensity cardio exercise with a heart rate of around 50-70%.
Muscle Strength
Mountain biking can be used to increase muscle strength because it engages a variety of muscle groups in the legs, core, and upper body. When you ride a mountain bike, you’re putting a lot of energy into moving your pedals! This works the muscles in your legs including your quads, hamstrings, and calves. The “highest” gear on your bike is the largest chain ring in the front and the smallest cog on your cassette (rear gears). In this position, the pedaling will be the hardest and you’ll be able to accelerate while traveling downhill. The higher the gear, the harder it is to pedal uphill. The lower the gear, the easier it is to pedal uphill. When you’re balancing upright on a bike, you’re engaging your core muscles. These include your abs, obliques, and lower back muscles. Steering, braking, and maneuvering on a mountain bike engage your upper body muscles including your shoulders, chest, and arms. Your shoulders are important in mountain biking, especially when it comes to steering and controlling your bike.
Balance and Coordination
Remember learning to ride your first bike? That uneasy feeling like you’re going to topple over was partially due to a lack of balance and coordination. Riding a bike, and especially mountain biking, demand & improve balance and coordination. When riding technical terrain, you have to constantly adjust your body position and balance on the bike. You also have to coordinate between different muscle groups to pedal, steer, and maneuver the bike over obstacles. Your reaction time is important, as you must make split-second decisions to navigate around obstacles and hazards on the trail.
Weight Loss and Management
Like any form of exercise, mountain biking can support your weight loss goals. While exercise does factor into weight loss and weight management, it’s important to note that studies have shown diet & nutrition are far more important contributors. That being said, mountain biking can still be used to help with weight loss. Mountain biking burns calories, can increase your metabolism, can help reduce stress (a factor that leads to weight gain), and encourages healthy habits like eating a balanced diet and getting enough sleep.
Stress and Anxiety Reduction
As intimidating and stressful riding over rough terrain might be, mountain biking is actually a great way to reduce stress and promote relaxation. When mountain biking, your body will release endorphins which are natural mood-boosting chemicals that can help you reduce stress and promote relaxation. As mentioned before, mountain biking requires intense concentration. Mountain biking usually takes people into natural settings such as forests, mountains, and parks. Mountain biking can be a social activity, allowing you to connect with other riders and form supportive friendships. Social connections are incredibly important for our health.
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Optimizing Your Cycling Routine for Weight Loss
To supercharge your weight loss efforts while cycling, consider incorporating High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) into your routine. HIIT involves alternating short bursts of all-out effort with brief recovery periods. Try going from a moderate pace to an all-out sprint for 30 to 60 seconds, then returning to a steady pace for a few minutes. This approach can increase your post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), which can last 24-36 hours post-workout, and help you burn more calories effectively.
Unfortunately, the longer you cycle, your muscles will adapt to the demands of pedaling, making it easier and more comfortable for your body. This means fewer calories are burned. Therefore, you need to increase the intensity and distance, time, or vary your terrain to lose more weight.
To get faster uphill, there are two ways to attack your power-to-weight ratio. You can increase your FTP or decrease weight. Ideally, you want to do both. Fat does a cyclist no favors when your power-to-weight ratio is concerned, but muscle certainly plays a vital role.
Structured Training
Structured training is an efficient way to create a calorie deficit and raise your fitness. Raising your FTP will allow you to burn even more calories because you are producing more power. A higher FTP means that you will complete workouts with a higher average power. More power equals more calories. The best training plans will include the intensity you need to meet the demands of your event. High-intensity workouts have an additional benefit. They increase your post-exercise oxygen consumption, which can last 24-36 hours post-workout. After VO2 Max, anaerobic, and, sprint workouts your body works to replenish fuel stores, metabolize lactate, and reduce body temperature.
If you are new to interval training, you can use Plan Builder to create a custom training plan aligned with your goal event. It’s best to start with a low-volume plan and work your way up over time. This will give you the flexibility to add low-intensity fasted rides to drive fat-burning adaptations.
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Fasted Rides
Riding in a fasted or glycogen-depleted state can be another way to train your body to burn fat. These rides are limited in that they need to be short or very slow. Fasted rides are good at burning fat, but won’t elicit a large training stimulus. Just be careful not to overdo it. Extend or high-intensity fasted rides tend to catabolize muscle-something you want to avoid. Adding a second ride with a fat-burning focus is another great tool for weight loss. You can do these either earlier or later within the same day. Fasted and two-a-day rides can be used continually during weight loss.
Nutrition: Fueling Your Body for Weight Loss and Performance
Losing weight through cycling is not about cutting calories or drastically reducing your food intake. To avoid being under-fueled while riding, maintain a balanced and nutritious diet that complements your cycling routine. By focusing on the quality of your food choices, you can fuel your body effectively and sustain the energy needed for those miles on the road. Embrace a diet rich in lean proteins, fruits, vegetables, fiber, and healthy fats to keep your body well-nourished. Under-fueling can lead to energy crashes during your rides, leaving you fatigued and susceptible to accidents.
At face value, weight loss is a simple formula-eat less and move more. Dig a bit deeper, and it’s much more complicated than that. Not only do hormones play a significant role, but so does the mental aspect. It’s important to re-establish a healthy relationship with food. Losing weight happens primarily in the kitchen. Creating a calorie deficit is what leads to weight loss. The right food choices, coupled with riding, deliver a one-two punch. The goal is to lose fat and spare as much muscle as possible. If there is too much of a caloric deficit, you will lose muscle. With so many different types of diets, it can be a bit confusing, but mostly they all create a calorie deficit. What worked for someone else might not work for you. As with so many things, there are trade-offs to any dieting strategy.
When you have limited calories, you want to get the most bang for your buck. You can cut a significant portion of calories by avoiding empty calories like alcohol, soft drinks, junk food, and processed sugars. You will be amazed by how much food you can eat when it is nutrient-dense and low-calorie. Eating nutrient-dense was a massive change for taste buds. Green foods rarely made it on the plate, but over time your taste will change. Remember to start small. For example, instead of just eating salads for a week, replace one meal with a salad. When making your food choices, fruits and vegetables are great additions to your plate. Eat lots of vegetables as they are low in calories but high in nutrients. Include smaller amounts of healthy fats, like avocados, olive oil, and nuts. Finally, make sure you are getting enough protein. Turkey and chicken are great because they are low in saturated fats.
Macronutrient Balance
When optimizing your diet for cycling performance and weight loss, it’s helpful to think of your macronutrients as a lever. On one end, you have fats, and on the other, you have carbs. At the fulcrum rests proteins. So the first step is determining how much protein you need. Then prioritize carbohydrates because it’s the body’s preferred fuel source when performance matters. Even though you are working out, you still want to keep a sensible calorie deficit.
Preserving Muscle Mass
When you are cycling for weight loss, you want to preserve as much lean muscle mass as possible. There are three key things that you can do to preserve lean muscle mass while you are combining cycling and weight loss. First, create a sensible calorie deficit. Additionally, you are going to want to eat plenty of protein. The general recommendation for protein for endurance training and weight loss is around 2g of protein per kilogram of body weight. Eating lean proteins will help keep the calories lower while ensuring you are getting enough. Finally, add in some strength training to help your weight loss. You don’t have to spend hours in the gym to reap some benefits.
Food Journaling
A big help in limiting calories is keeping a food journal. It can be cumbersome to record everything, but it assists in selecting the proper serving sizes, food choices, and finding all the hidden calories in a diet. Even if you don’t record everything forever, do it for two weeks.
Setting Goals and Tracking Progress
Before embarking on a weight loss journey, you have to determine the reasons why. Is it for performance or body image? Too often, our body’s view revolves around a perception of should and the thought that “I don’t look like a certain type of athlete.” Having a central goal simplifies your decision making when you are trying to lose weight. When you develop your goal, tie it to an event. By connecting your goal to an event, your goal is measurable and timely. Often when shedding the pounds, the focus can become the number on the scale. Your body is unique. What is a healthy weight for someone else is not what is best for you.
Recording Data
Recording data not only provides the means for measuring your success but also helps you celebrate progress. Analyzing a weekly trend helps because weight fluctuates daily. While the scale can be used as a data point, don’t obsess over that number. Two easy ways to measure body composition are skinfold calipers or a body composition scale. Having one of these scales to step on every day can be massively effective. Just make sure to measure under similar circumstances. For the best data, always measure under the same conditions.
Consistency
Healthy weight loss takes time and change. Consistency is your greatest ally. A steady approach will help you analyze what is working and what isn’t so that you can develop positive new habits. Success in weight loss is the result of being consistent in food choices and training over months. Consistency helps you avoid the crash diet cycle. You go crazy, lose weight, burn out, then put the weight back on. The worst part is that not only do you gain more weight, but it can wreck your body composition. Once you are committed to a healthy lifestyle, start making changes. Start small. Little changes are easier to manage and will aid your consistency. As you progress, you can add more changes to your diet.
The Mental Game: Staying Motivated and Consistent
In addition to planning your cycling regimen, staying motivated is key to maintaining your routine. Mix up your routes, challenge yourself with new goals, and consider cycling with friends or joining group rides for more encouragement. Finally, don’t underestimate the importance of sleeping in your cycling routine.
Internal Motivation
Internal motivation for exercise and attainment happens when someone enjoys the process. So, how is internal motivation created and sustained? By attainment and empowerment.
Safety and Comfort: Gear and Bike Considerations
Wearing helmets and protective gear and choosing the right bike are essential for your safety and comfort. Your bike should be well-maintained, match your body size, and equipped with proper safety features. A well-fitted bike helps prevent injuries related to poor posture or overreaching, and safety features such as good brakes and light frames are crucial for riding in various conditions. A fitness bike is a versatile bicycle designed for a balanced mix of road and off-road cycling. These bikes typically feature a lightweight frame, flat handlebars, and medium-width tires suitable for recreational rides, commuting, and fitness purposes. Polygon’s PATH F4 offers an upright riding position, thanks to its geometric design and flat handlebar, ensuring comfort during your journeys.
Patience and Sustainability
It’s important to understand that cycling won’t lead to rapid, dramatic weight loss within just a few weeks. Instead, aim for a steady and sustainable approach, like shedding around 1 kg or less per week. Therefore, you need to be patient with the process. Don’t go far beyond your capacity or force yourself to lose more weight when you are not in your optimal condition.
Mountain Biking: More Than Just Weight Loss
For mountain bikers in particular, there are more benefits to racing light and lean than simply less gravity on the climbs. A leaner, lighter physique and increased power to weight ratio improves other areas of mountain bike performance.
Faster Accelerations
Accelerations are a large part of mountain biking. Race starts, sprint finishes, increasing speed into short steep climbs and out of corners, are all common places accelerations are needed. With less mass to move, you can accelerate faster with the same power. On a course with 50 corners this adds up. For short steep climbs, a fast acceleration can make the difference between cleaning the climb or walking.
In and Out of the Saddle Transitions
Next time you are out on your mountain bike, count how many times you make the sit to stand transition. Probably more than you realized! Mountain bikers are up and down a lot - sitting into a corner, standing in the corner and accelerating out of the corner, and then sitting down into the next corner. Up-down-up-down is common. Carrying extra mass on your torso is a penalty each time you stand. Racing lighter will make these transitions faster and use less energy.
Riding out of the saddle happens a lot more on the mountain bike than the road. Most descending is done standing, accelerations, technical sections, some climbing and sprint finishes are out of the saddle. With less body weight, more energy can be devoted to forward momentum than holding your body up.
Increased Agility and Efficiency
In technical sections, smaller lighter riders, are more agile and move over the bike faster.
Increased Mojo
Peaking for a race while lean always adds to the feeling of readiness and increases excitement about performance. This feeds on itself as high motivation promotes good training habits and the discipline to keep it all together until race day. Nailing race weight puts you in the flow of feeling race-ready, and increases confidence. Looking the part and acting the part, leads to being the part.
Better Performance in Hot Weather
Overheating during racing makes your brain tell your body to slow down and cool-it. Fat is a good insulator and common sense will tell you a leaner athlete will shed heat during intense exercise and on hot days more easily that an athlete with more body fat. There are further benefits than simply having less insulation that promote higher performance in leaner athletes on hot days. Muscle is denser than fat, thus a leaner athlete is smaller with a higher surface area to volume ratio than a fatter athlete, allowing them to dissipate heat more quickly.
Hydration Considerations
Dehydration lowers performance. Fat contains 10 percent water, muscle contains 78 percent water and blood contains 75 percent water. A leaner athlete carries more water on board at the start of a race to draw from for sweating. A leaner athlete will also have more stored muscle glycogen. Glycogen releases water when metabolized which also contributes to hydration. Leaner athletes can sweat more before dehydration impacts performance.
Return on Investment
Power to weight ratio is key for performance. For an athlete who is fit and has been training for a few seasons, losing body weight is often easier than building power to increase power to weight ratio. Also, cutting weight on your belly is a lot cheaper than cutting weight on your bike.
Increased Comfort
This benefit is significant for the long distance racers; 24-hour solo and bikepacking guys. Less weight on the saddle means fewer saddle sores, and, to be blunt, less flab and skinnier limbs results in less chafing. This many not affect performance per-se, but will significantly affect enjoyment on a long ride. Sweat, dirt and raw skin are not an enjoyable combination and can distract from the overall race experience.
Better Traction
Lighter people can run lower tire pressure for better traction and faster cornering without the fear of flatting.
Improved Health
Losing weight is good for your health. It can lower blood pressure and protect you from diabetes and cancer. A healthier body is good for training and performance.
Real-Life Success Stories
Singletracks spoke with five people who lost weight by mountain biking. All of them had different stories, different reasons why they wanted to lose weight, and a different process. None of them decided to lose weight and that a mountain bike might be a useful tool.
Howard Hoes
“I just fell into mountain biking last year,” said Howard Hoes. He’s originally from Nebraska and worked in the construction field for 35 years, which took a toll on his body. When he retired from construction, he and his wife bought a 5th wheel and headed down to Florida. “After my knee replacement it hurt to walk. I wanted to lose some weight. I was approaching 300 pounds. He’s lost more than 20 pounds and says that his weight keeps dropping. When he told his doctors about his new activity, they told him, “just don’t fall.” Hoes has of course crashed since then. Everyone has. “For a while, I was trying to figure out why my jaw and cheeks were hurting after a ride. Now he tries to ride at least every other day. “It’s kind of a spiritual thing,” he says. “You have to focus on the trail or a line that you’re going to take and make a decision.
Josiah Johnson
In 2015, Josiah Johnson was finishing his dissertation in a doctorate program in exercise science. Johnson’s doctor told him that he had high blood pressure, and that his cholesterol and triglyceride levels were climbing. “I wasn’t exercising near what I used to and eating fast food too much. At one point, my clothes weren’t fitting. After landing a job as a professor of exercise science at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, he found himself telling his students what he knew he should have been practicing himself. He realized that he was close to some mountain bike trails and decided to check them out. It was the perfect formula for Johnson. The trails started a mile away from his house. There’s no way I could do an hour and a half in the gym. Johnson still applies his knowledge of exercise to his mountain bike rides.
Cherie Lasota
Some people come for the fun and stay for the community. Cherie Lasota picked up her first mountain bike when she finished college. When she had her son in 2005, Lasota says that she was about 60 pounds heavier than she had ever been. Most of it was pregnancy weight, but she still wasn’t happy about it. She wanted to create a different lifestyle for her and her son than what she had grown up with, and that meant regular exercise and eating right. For Mother’s Day in 2010, she told her son that what she wanted was for him to go riding with her. He was up to the challenge. Lasota says that three months later, he was mountain biking with her on the trails, and he was racing when he was six years old. There was a period where she wasn’t mountain biking as often. She started participating in more triathlons, and even though the challenge was there, it wasn’t as fun as mountain biking.
Scott Jensen
Something was off for a while before Scott Jensen saw a doctor. One day he got home after eating a sub sandwich and a soda and felt like he couldn’t function. He knew it was time to see a doctor. Medical staff informed Jensen that he was a type 2 diabetic and would have to start taking a slew of medication, including self-injected insulin three to four times per day. His fasting blood sugar was at a level of 300 mg/dl. Jensen asked if he could delay the insulin and try to mitigate his diabetes with exercise and nutrition instead. Jensen started mountain biking when a friend took him out in Scottsdale, AZ, before he moved to Idaho. “The only time I really felt good was after a ride. Now, Jensen’s blood sugar averages categorize him as pre-diabetic. “I always ride once [a week]. A good, long ride, probably about 15-18 miles.” Jensen also gets out for a shorter ride once a week. “All these insurance companies, they want to promote health…why don’t they dangle a mountain bike and say, “hey, if you reach this level of health, you can get a new mountain bike.” You know, what’s cheaper? Five years of insulin, or a bike?
Rick Olson
Rick Olson moved to South Carolina in his late 20s. “I started looking for interesting ways to lose weight. He wasn’t interested in road biking again, and he was already close to a lot of trails in Pisgah and Brevard. Olson actually had enough room on his land to build his own trails. He started building skinnies and other features to ride on, built from logs and railroad ties. Olson lost 25 pounds in the first year that he got back into riding, and it’s since stayed off. “I gain a pound here, or lose a pound there now, but once it fell off, it never came back. Olson is always looking for a new feature to build, or something new to try on his bike. “I’m kind of the guy that likes to push myself and see what I can and can’t do.