Cycling has a well-documented list of benefits to your health including muscular, cardiovascular, and even in helping you lose weight. Cycling in general, not just mountain biking, has so many benefits it’s hard just to study and look into a single one. This means that the answer to the question should be obvious: does mountain biking work your abs and core?
Mountain biking provides a full body workout. Both your abs and core need to be engaged in order to stabilize your body and remain in control of the bike. This applies most to situations where you are standing on the bike rather than sitting. If you’re balancing, you’re using your core muscles.
Mountain biking works several muscles in your body, mostly centralized in your lower body through your quads, glutes, hamstrings, and your hips. However, your abs and even your heart can get a great workout when you are seriously putting in the vigorous effort to work out through your bike ride.
The way mountain biking benefits your whole body’s health cannot go understated. With benefits to strengthening your core, quads, hamstrings, glutes, and heart, it’s clear that mountain biking is one of those sports that does great things for all aspects of your health.
In reality, there are very few sports that help you build muscle and stamina nearly as much as mountain biking does. The sport offers you a full-body workout and definitive goals that you can set to feel more accomplished once you finish a good ride.
Mountain biking is considered among the safest, most effective, and among the least expensive (aside from the cost of the bike itself) ways to get a fully comprehensive workout.
This activity is good for the health of your physical body, but it is also known to help reduce stress and anxiety and help your mental health get strengthened throughout your exercise. All of this while being fun and easily modified for your own skill level.
In What Other Ways Does Mountain Biking Help Your Body?
With so much going for the sport in terms of its effects on the body, it’s not a stretch to say that mountain biking is among the best in fitness activities. Of course, there is more to be said about each of the distinct ways mountain biking helps you stay fit and active and its benefits to your overall health.
There is more to fitness than just knowing what parts of your body are benefited, knowing how it is benefited is another way to understand the incredible benefits to your body that mountain biking has.
Helping Your Heart
Cycling in general, but more especially mountain biking, is almost unrivaled in its ability to give your full cardiovascular system a good workout. Through the constant exercise your heart receives while out biking the trails for such an extended period, the British Medical Association’s study has shown that cycling for at least 20 miles in a week can be linked to an almost 50% reduced risk of coronary disease.
Mountain biking is an extended period of a steady heart workout proven to help you keep your cardiovascular system healthy.
Additionally, regular trips out to mountain bike and cycling can help you control your weight, and reduce your risk of obesity. Cycling helps increase your metabolic rate while building muscles and burning fat through your workout. Regular cycling can burn around 300 calories in an hour, but the terrain and intensity of mountain biking can easily do more.
Just like many cardiovascular exercises like running and traditional trail biking, mountain biking can undoubtedly see notable increases in stamina. The climbing aspect of mountain biking is incredibly demanding on the rider’s lungs. The repeated high-intensity use and extended strain allow the lung capacity to be improved by as much as 15% when regularly exercising.
Reducing Stress
It is well documented that aerobic exercises, like mountain biking, for example, can have a huge positive impact on mental health as it does on physical health. The way mountain biking supports mental health is by reducing the release of the stress hormone known as cortisol.
Moreover, it can even boost the release of endorphins while it is reducing the cortisol release, creating an incredibly powerful combination. This combination can combat and relieve stress, anxiety, and even give the rider a mild feeling of euphoria. As such, it comes of no surprise that mountain bikers and cyclists are generally happier and much less stressed individuals thanks to their enjoyment of the sport.
However, alongside the reduced stress and anxiety, mountain biking is also an incredibly liberating sport. There is a level of freedom that cannot be matched by treadmills and gym memberships that can be achieved easily through the exploration of mountain biking.
With countless new trails, mountains, and places to experience, many mountain bikers enjoy a unique sense of freedom that is uncommon in other workouts.
Less Physical Stress on the Body
Mountain biking is a low-impact sport, which means that many of its benefits to the body come at little cost to your joints’ health. Unlike running, which has much more impact and stress put on the runner’s joints creating a risk of injury, mountain biking puts a lot less stress on the biker’s body by comparison. This reduces the risk of joint pain and injury that is so prevalent with runners.
Additionally, cycling is a non-load bearing sport. This means that mountain biking is considered non-load bearing. The act of sitting helps to take the pressure off of your joints to keep you going. By reducing the load your joints are bearing, you help reduce the risk of joint injury and general aches and pains.
Balance and Coordination
Unlike stationary workouts like running on a treadmill or the use of a stair stepper machine, mountain biking is a dynamic and involved activity that requires a lot of focus. Mountain biking trails are known to have rough terrain, and varying pitch and elevation. You need to pay attention.
This variation in the terrain creates a need to focus on the rider’s position and stability throughout the ride. There is a much-reduced ability to “zone out” or fall into an easy rhythm, with mountain biking it’s all about the focus and attention paid to the terrain, and the obstructions throughout the journey.
The constant need to focus on balance, coordination, and even the ability to concentrate helps strengthen the neurological pathways that reinforce muscle memory. The ability to balance and keep your coordination requires the ability to use the combined resources of your brain through the senses, muscles, and nervous system.
Keeping these systems constantly active as your body ages helps avoid the risk of disabilities from aging, and in general, life helps to reduce the risk of injuries.
General Health
Mountain biking is a full-body workout that is incredibly involved in muscular strength, cardiovascular health, and the ability to reduce stress. Mountain biking works out your quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, calves, abdomen, obliques, lower back, and arms. Even while helping through all of these muscles, it’s protecting your joints and improving your neurological focus, attention, and balance.
As long as you start off small and careful in the beginning to avoid any undue damage or injury, you can easily build into pushing yourself to work harder as the exercise gets easier. A few important considerations to get the most and best out of your workout are staying hydrated, working to improve your skills, and never giving up as you continue to improve your skill.
Like any workout, seeing results and improvements takes time, but mountain biking is an incredibly rewarding workout that does wonders for the body when done regularly and properly.
This combination of benefits is hard to find among other sports, and can’t be understated when it comes to their impact on overall health.
Tim is the founder of SimpleMTB and has been mountain biking for decades. He raced in the Ontario Cup series during his teenage years and riding continues to be one of his favorite hobbies now as an adult.
