5 Health Benefits of Cycling 15-20 Minutes a Day

We all want to exercise more efficiently. Sometimes, it's not about the joy of riding; it's about maximising our results whilst minimising the time we spend doing it. But can we expect to reap the health benefits of cycling 15 - 20 minutes daily?

Is 15 minutes of cycling a day enough?

Any exercise is better than no exercise at all. Remembering that is important when someone is new to cycling. It's easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information and advice available. And enough is relative. It depends on the person who's exercising, the type of exercise they're doing, and the intensity they're doing it at. Weight, age, and health all play a role, too. The NHS and CDC recommend 150 minutes of moderate exercise each week or 75 minutes of intensive exercise.

If we break that down into daily amounts, that's 21 minutes of moderate activity each day or 10 minutes of intensive exercise. Moderate cycling would be a gentler ride with enough effort to raise the heart rate. Intensive cycling could be taking a class or a more challenging outdoor ride. You could also maximise your time by incorporating high-intensity interval training (HIIT). These short bursts of intense exercise maximise your results by allowing you to go all-out in a shorter session rather than stringing out a longer workout at a slower pace.

5 Health Benefits of Cycling 15 to 20 Minutes a Day

You may already be familiar with the more general health benefits of exercising for 15 minutes each day, but we want to look at cycling specifically.

Cycling Boosts Heart Health

Cycling is an excellent cardiovascular choice for anyone who doesn't want to go running. It's both high-intensity and low-impact, so it's suitable both as a HIT workout and for more moderate sessions. Several studies suggest that cycling for 15 to 20 minutes each day can be beneficial for heart health. One study compared two groups using an indoor bike. Group one did a two-minute warm-up, a 20-second sprint, and then a slower two-minute ride and repeated it for 10 minutes. Group two rode steadily for 45 minutes. After 12 weeks, both groups had a 20% increase in cardiovascular endurance. The study showed that shorter, intense bursts of exercise can offer the same heart health benefits as a longer workout.

Similarly, Science Daily wrote about one study that found HIIT workouts improved cardiorespiratory fitness almost twice as much as a long stretch of moderate-intensity running or cycling. A 15-minute workout can be more beneficial than a 45-minute one at a slower pace. It's good news for anyone struggling to fit longer gym or cycling sessions into their day.

Classes are a good example of this. Riders go hard because they want a more intense workout in a shorter session. Intensity plays a crucial role in maximising the benefits of cycling for shorter periods. Vigorous doesn't have to mean going all-out, but you should push yourself if you can. All exercise has health benefits, but according to one study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week can decrease your risk of getting cancer or cardiovascular disease. That's just 12.5 minutes a day. Regular exercise can reduce a person's risk of coronary heart disease by up to 29% in women and 21% in men. Another study found that 15 minutes of exercise each day increased life expectancy by 3 years.

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Biking for Better Brain Health

Cycling and cardio have a clear connection, but you may not know that cycling, even for short durations, is good for the brain, too. In fact, cycling for just 15 minutes can improve your memory. Bicycling.com reports on one study that showed how cycling can improve the memory of older participants, so much so that it's been put forward as a key way to reduce the risk of developing dementia. It makes sense. When we pedal (indoors or outdoors), we increase the amount of blood flowing through the body and, significantly, to the brain. According to the Duvine website, this builds a bigger and more connected brain by increasing white matter, nerve cells, neurons and stimulating those sections of the brain that help us form memories.

Cyclists Sleep Better

Sleep is vital for our general health. It's not just the amount of time we're in bed but the quality of that sleep. Poor sleep has been attributed to a wide range of health issues, including dementia, heart disease, obesity and depression. Sleep helps control our hormone levels. We're more stressed when we haven't had enough of it. We eat more. We become irritable. Cortisol is released when we're not sleeping properly, and that's the stress hormone that makes it harder for us to have healing sleep. It can become a vicious circle.

Bike Radar reported on one study by Stanford University where insomnia sufferers who lived inactive lives were asked to take up cycling. After the experiment concluded, the insomniacs found it took them half the time to fall asleep and that they spent an extra hour asleep each night. Indoor cyclists can benefit from a HIIT session of 15 minutes to improve sleep. One Australian study found that having completed 8 weeks of HIIT, women improved their sleep by 23%.

Cycling to Live Longer

If a pill could do that, wouldn't we all be taking it? One study in the European Journal of Cardiology looked at participants over a 12-year period and found that even those doing only a brisk walk of 15 minutes were 22% less likely to die during the study than those who did no exercise. You can apply the same logic to a 15-minute bike ride or a 15-minute session on an indoor bike. What's interesting about this study is that the results aren't only applicable to vigorous exercise. The study wasn't based on a HIIT workout. It was based on a brisk walk. Slow and steady on a bike works, too.

A recent study in the British Medical Journal found that people who spend between 8 and 10 hours sitting in front of the television could mitigate some of the most significant health risks of that lifestyle by exercising at a moderate to vigorous pace for 11 minutes a day. Most of us have 11 minutes a day to exercise.

Making exercise more efficient is one of the reasons we developed the electricity-generating RE:GEN bike with its AI to help riders build better workouts for the time they have available or for the calorie burn they need. There's no reason why you can't also apply the 11 minutes a day rule to other activities you enjoy: running, walking, gardening, Zumba, fencing…

Cycling for Weight Management

Cycling is a good way to manage weight. It's not always about fitting into that bikini or getting into those new swim shorts. Staying within a healthy weight range means you can still enjoy the finer things in life whilst supporting better health. Cycling and indoor cycling classes provide a means of calorie and fat burning that can make it easier to stay at a healthy weight - whatever that means for you. The calories burned on an exercise bike can quickly add up, even over shorter durations. According to Harvard Health Publishing, someone around 155 pounds can expect to burn around 173 calories during a 20-minute moderately intense session.

173 calories is a good start. If you're trying to lose weight, you'll benefit more by adding a couple of longer cycling sessions to your routine. Classes are a good choice, too, to maximise calorie burn. Adding other forms of exercise like swimming, walking or aerobics, for example, will help, too.

Cycling for 15 to 20 minutes per day has some important health benefits. The effort and intensity of your cycling will dictate how far these benefits go, but even 15 minutes of gentle exercise benefits overall health. Starting small can also help you engage more consistently with a fitness routine, which you can grow into longer sessions. The calories burned on an exercise bike can quickly add up. Whether you do it while you're watching a TV show or taking part in live or on-demand classes, you shouldn't assume that you need big, lengthy sessions to improve health and wellbeing.

15 minutes could also be riding to the shop and back or a weekend ride in the countryside. Remember that any exercise is better than none, no matter where you are on your fitness journey. If you have pre-existing conditions, ask your doctor for advice before starting.

Cycling Everday - Good or Bad? 

It depends on how intensively you're exercising. For athletes, it's important to build in rest days, to cross-train or to switch down to pleasure rides. Any form of exercise that regularly demands peak performance will require rest days. This is because the body needs time to repair and recover. Failing to build in sufficient rest days can lead to overtraining, fatigue, injury and poor performance. Ensure you're getting sufficient rest days if you're regularly hitting indoor cycling classes. These can be incredibly intense. Other riders - commuting cyclists, hobbyists, etc. - may find that cycling every day offers few problems. However, this does depend on the intensity and duration of each ride and how physically fit the rider is. Always listen to your body. The health benefits of indoor and outdoor cycling are well documented, so don't let overtraining and overexertion undo all those positives. 

Is It Good to Workout Twice a Day?

If you're regularly exercising 15-20 minutes a day, then you might be wondering if there is any benefit to working out twice a day, especially if you're participating in different disciplines. 

For example, maybe you cycle to work in the morning and then after work, go for a run or complete a yoga class. Most of us live busy lives, so it's not always possible to spend lengthy periods on our bikes or in the gym. We may need to space out workouts throughout the day in order to fit them in. 

Intensity plays a role in working out twice a day. 

Firstly, you're more likely to hit your fitness goals faster. This is mentioned in an article on the Very Well Fit website, where it says that training twice a day can 'trigger accelerated muscle growth and strength gains'.

Similarly, the Onnit website sheds some light on several interesting studies that suggest it is good to workout twice a day. You can get stronger by training twice a day, and you can also build stamina and 'help the body burn fat and glycogen more efficiently.'

You'll still need to add in and account for rest days too. Working out twice a day could make it easier to overtrain and risk burnout and fatigue, which is counter-intuitive to any physical fitness programme. You may find it useful to set a schedule or exercise programme. This will help you build in those rest days.

Splitting your workouts up can help. For example, you might choose to do cardio in the morning but strength training in the evening. You could go running in the morning and then do a recovery run later in the day. By changing up your workouts, you're less likely to overuse muscles and get injured. Try to avoid going too hard and repeating the same exercises twice a day. For example, taking an indoor cycling class twice a day is going to put a strain on the body. Equally, lifting heavy weights for extended periods twice a day will increase the risk of injury or overtraining. 

You'll also want to make sure that you're fuelling your workouts sufficiently. 

Workouts don't have to be super long. You don't even need a gym membership. If you have a road bike, it's as simple as jumping on and away you go. You can also buy an at-home indoor cycling bike. Home bikes make it easier to commit to 15 minutes of exercise each day because they're right there in your house. But sometimes, that may not be enough motivation.