Why You Should Better Appreciate Stationary Bikes

No matter your age or condition, there is probably a stationary bike for you. Learn why stationary bikes have evolved to become one of the safest and most comfortable ways to obtain a healthy, regular workout.
Stationary bikes help eliminate excuses. Every day we grow more attached to our excuses for not getting enough exercise. Whether its our kids, our careers, our aches and pains or just the mundane responsibilities of day-to-day life, we always have some excuse why we fail to squeeze a little aerobic exercise or resistance training into our lives.

The Evergreen Value of Aerobic Exercise

And exercise we must. Despite passing trends in diets and muscle-building theories, the value of low-impact aerobic activity never fades and only seems to increase with each new generation of medical research. From helping you externalize your stress to reducing the likelihood of heart disease, regular aerobic exercise is fundamental and indisputable. But how can almost everyone - no matter their circumstance - get that regular aerobic exercise we all so desperately need?

A Stationary Bike For Your Home

I feel more people need to appreciate the value, ease and comfort of stationary bikes. Modern models have evolved to become more compact and more easy on our bodies. With inexpensive models that squeeze into even smaller spaces, stationary bikes are an excellent option for obtaining your exercise in a safe, fun and easy way.

I urge people to keep a stationary bike at home. No matter how inspired and motivated you feel when you agree to that gym membership, inevitably you will have days when preparing yourself and driving to the gym becomes somehow prohibitive. When your exercise bike is setup in a comfortable room of your home, you can work a bike ride into even the most stressful and tumultuous of days.

Recumbent Stationary Bikes

I particularly like recumbent stationary bikes, as they're accessible for a broad spectrum of ages and individual capabilities. A recumbent stationary bike features a wider, more comfortable seat and a reclining posture which is more comfortable for most people. Because a recumbent stationary bike keeps your center of gravity behind your pedaling instead of above it, you exert less force downwards through your hips, knees and ankles.

Exercise bikes are already excellent for people recovering from injuries or exercising with disabilities. Recumbent stationary bikes only make it easier for these individuals to obtain a health amount of rigorous exercise without stressing their back or joints.

Upright stationary bikes (the standard and most common exercise bike), requires using your core and abdominal muscles to keep you upright. If you are not someone who works out regularly, these are probably weaker than they should be, thus your back muscles must step in to help you stay upright more than they should.

I still love upright exercise bikes, but when discussing exercise bikes I really like to encourage people to try a recumbent exercise bike. They're often far more comfortable than people expect.

The Value of Stationary Bike Exercise

Stationary bike exercise provides excellent conditioning to your glutes (your butt), your quads, your thighs and your calf muscles. A stationary bike can provide both a strength-building workout by applying high resistance for short, intense periods or just an endurance workout by setting a medium to low resistance and cycling for a longer period of time.

Stationary bikes provide smooth no-impact exercise. Even some of the other more clever and evolved exercise machines can flail your body about in ways that can be stressful to joints or hips. It is difficult to imagine a more safe or comfortable exercise machine for a broader spectrum of people than a recumbent stationary bike.

So I encourage people to consider a stationary bike for their homes. Such machines are far more comfortable and safe than they realize and by having something so easy and comfortable in your own home it is far more likely that you'll not skip a workout on a rainy day. So I encourage you to investigate the value and comfort of stationary bikes today.
Stationary Bikes
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By Lars Garrett
Published: 10/16/2009
 
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