Mountain Bike Exercise – Weight Loss!

Weights and tread-mills take the fun out of exercise! But, one needs to exercise in some capacity to affect weight loss faster. Many folk will tell you that aerobic exercise can burn fat faster than lifting and have positive cardio-pulminary benefits. In this post I will speak about fun, exercise and injury prevention. Here is the Walmart photo of my new bike, the NEXT (TM) Nitro.

Wow, isn’t this a good looking bike? I’m not a pro mountain biker so I did not need to go for the top of the line bike. I am still obese as of this writing and am looking for fun ways to incorporate exercise into my normal routines. I have rode street bikes most of my life but this is the first time I have tried to go off-road! I live near Mission Regional Park in Santee, CA, and found this map. Here is a beginning video I found on youtube.

The reason I bought a bike was to start getting a portion of my aerobic exercise while having fun! I tested out the bike yesterday and today by going for an hour and a half each day. Many people drive to the gym each day and climb on an exercise bike. I am trying to take the middle man out of the equation by making a real bike ride fun! What you might be thinking? Fun? YES – I said fun.

I don’t see the point of exercise for exercises sake. Why? Because if you are doing something you don’t really want to do; you will probably not keep up with it. I have also started walking the dogs for exercise. Now I only have to do my dumbbell workout and some bag work to complete my exercise routine! Lifestyle changes happen easier if they are dual purpose in my opinion.

Riding trails for me is fun. I get to see stuff way faster than If I was hiking. I can experience the great outdoors because Mission Trails Regional Park is 10 minutes from my house. Now is bicycling good exercise? Why not jog? I am 51 years old and have some injuries that I have to work around during exercise. My right knee cannot take allot of jogging. But riding a bike slowly seems to work my leg muscles just fine and so far has been less impacting than jogging. 

So there it is – bike riding for me is fun, good aerobic exercise and less impacting on my joints than jogging. This sounds like part of the sometimes elusive ‘lifestyle change’ everyone is looking for in life. I will let you know how this goes over time and hope you are finding results with your exercise routine.