Do you love cycling to work? Do you love cycling with the family? Maybe you even love to cycle at the gym. The first two are free. The last one is not. Yet if you’ve got the bike already, why shell out for a gym membership to go and sit on an exercise bike, when you have the bike part already at home? Let’s look at how to save some money in the long run and turn your bike into an exercise bike.
Benefits Of Cycling
Let’s first discuss the benefits of cycling. There are loads. Health benefits include increased strengthened bones, muscle strength and flexibility. As well as the obvious benefits of working on your fitness. There are also mental health benefits as you focus on the ride and pedal your worries away for an hour or even a full day. There is also a financial benefit as currently bicycles don’t need insurance or tax to be on the roads. As you’re using your legs to pedal your cycle, you’re not paying for fuel either. So there are many cycling benefits.
Why Would You Want To Turn Your Bike Into An Exercise Bike?
It’s a very good question. The weather is maybe the first one that springs to mind. Riding your bike for pleasure in the cold is not that much fun. If you’re at the gym, paying to be there, your bike is propped up at home, or even worse, locked up outside the gym whilst you use a machine inside. There’s nothing quite like pedaling on the road but should you want to improve your cycling with spinning or leg strength training going through the gears, you can turn your bike into an exercise bike. This is ideal for keeping your fitness levels up during the dark cold nights of winter and it even means you can cut the cord from that gym membership.
How Can You Turn Your Bike Into An Exercise Bike?
There are a couple of ways of doing it and as always with sporting products, there are a number of different makes and models to look at. Naturally, they all have different prices too! You could buy a trainer, which clamps your back wheel allowing you to cycle stationary. Alternatively you can invest in a roller bike stand, which you basically ride on and both your wheels spin. There isn’t much price difference in them really. You’re looking at £100 or just over. These will pay for themselves if you cut out a couple of months of paying for the gym. Different models have different features, some of them fold away which is ideal if you don’t have a dedicate room for a workout space at home. You can also add a tablet holder to these, so you can cycle and watch or read. This might not be the best idea if you’re using a roller!
You can now see that you can indeed turn your bike into an exercise bike. You might have spent a small fortune on your bike and want to ride it whenever possible. Sometimes the cycle machines at the expensive gym just aren’t good enough and you’d rather be on your own saddle, enjoying your own bike, whatever the weather and wherever you can!
