With Balance Festival just around the corner, we are feeling fueled up and ready to toughen up our current cardio routine, especially when we remember to have a cup of Fully Charged tea in the morning. Read on to find out more about how you may want to switch your long run for a spin class, depending on your goal!
FEEL THE LOVE
If your ultimate goal is to improve your cardiovascular health, then by definition, anything that is considered cardio, will do just that.
However, some cardio can be better than others. Since cycling is lower impact, meaning it causes less muscle soreness and damage, we are able to do more for longer. The more cardio we do, the more efficient our hearts become at pumping blood all over the body, ultimately decreasing the number of beats per minute. Since we can cycle more, cycling is more efficient for heart health.
Keep in mind however that we should aim for no more than 60 minutes per day, as doing more than this can negatively affect our heart health. What a waste of time that would be, right?
FEEL THE BURN (NO, NOT THAT ONE)
We burn calories depending on the intensity or duration of an exercise session. While we can burn calories in multiple ways *ahem*, two of the top contenders for calorie burn are running and cycling.
Since running is more intense, as we use more muscles to complete this type of cardio, it could mean that we burn more calories. However, it could also be argued that since cycling is less intense, we could cycle for longer.
While there are many factors that determine how many calories we burn like weight, age, gender as well as general exercising conditions, such as if we run on an incline or the room temperature of the gym, many sources say that running is the better cardio in terms of calorie burn.
We recommend you try 20-minutes of each and compare your results!
FEEL THEM GAINS
Muscles are great! However, how your muscles are built and where you have them, depends on how you work out - so be careful!
Cycling puts the legs through a lot of work - pedal-pushing results in super strong glutes, quads and hamstrings! Match your bottom half to your top half by putting in extra time working on your upper body with weights.
Running on the other hand, uses more muscles in a more balanced way. While you can never build muscle this way, you will look super toned! Even your muscles will be stronger from the impact of hitting the ground as you run.
(KEEP) FEELING YOUR KNEES AND JOINTS
While running keeps us super toned, it also has a reasonable risk of frequent injuries - can you say shin splints? Cycling, on the other hand, does not - since we are sitting, we are not carrying our own body weight, which causes less strain on knees and other joints. Amazing, right? Maybe it is time to start biking to work?
FEELING GOOD
Regardless of our goals, we all have one thing in common: we exercise to feel good. There is nothing like that post-workout feeling, right? Are you still unsure whether you would want to change to different types of cardio? Relax - no harm ever came from just trying! Pick up a fully charged tea from offblak.com and let’s go!
Sources
http://wheeliegreat.com/cycling-benefits/
https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/cycling-vs-running
https://www.menshealth.com/uk/health/a745301/cycling-vs-running-101487/
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/ask-well-is-it-better-to-bike-or-run/
https://thesportsedit.com/blogs/news/sweat-top-10-london-spin-indoor-cycling-studios
