Is Your Indoor Cycling Workout Doing Enough to Build Leg Muscle?

We spoke to licensed private coach and biking coach Joseph David, ISSA-CPT, a Life Time group health and biking teacher in New York and New Jersey, to search out out if a biking class is sufficient to work your legs and tips on how to make indoor biking much more of a lower-body burn.

Which muscular tissues does biking work?

Biking does, in fact, work your leg muscular tissues. These pedals received’t transfer themselves, in spite of everything! You’ll be able to count on to work your quads (the muscular tissues on the fronts of your thighs), your glutes (the muscular tissues of your butt), and your calves (the muscular tissues on the backs of your decrease legs), David says.

“As you elevate your leg out of your core, you’re going to work your quads, and as you press down on the pedal, you’re firing up your glutes,” he says. If you happen to’re sporting biking footwear that strap into the pedals, you additionally work your hamstrings extra whenever you pull up in your pedal stroke, based on the Arthritis Basis.

Further bonus: Indoor biking additionally works your abs: “Your core is engaged all the class,” David provides.

“The true star of the present right here is including the resistance on a motorcycle.” —Joseph David, ISSA-CPT

How does biking evaluate to resistance coaching?

However regardless that biking strengthens your leg muscular tissues, focused lower-body power workouts — say, squats and deadlifts — are going to have an even bigger impact for those who’re actually seeking to construct muscle.

Based on a March 2015 assessment¹ in Acta Physiologica Hungarica, biking does improve leg muscle dimension, however any seen modifications occur extra slowly than the expansion you’d discover from conventional power coaching exercises.

Plus, indoor biking is linear; it solely entails shifting in a single aircraft. Decrease-body strikes like lateral lunges and lateral step-ups work your leg muscular tissues in several planes of movement, which helps construct balanced power by working completely different muscular tissues in several methods, based on USA Biking.

If you happen to actually need to construct leg muscle shortly, it is going to assist so as to add some lower-body power days to your exercise routine. However have in mind these periods will probably make you a greater bike owner over time, based on a March 2021 examine² within the Journal of Useful Morphology and Kinesiology.

And vice versa: Your biking may also assist your power coaching, David says. Pedaling your legs loosens up your hips and fires up your glutes, which means you is perhaps extra snug shifting via your full vary of movement on days whenever you’re lifting weights, he says.

Will biking alone strengthen your legs?

You completely will construct some leg power from solely doing biking and no power coaching. If that’s your plan, be sure to’re using with resistance. “The true star of the present right here is including the resistance on a motorcycle,” David says. Your muscular tissues should work more durable to show the pedals and can adapt and develop stronger within the course of. “I prefer to say hustle to get the muscle.”

You may also need to keep seated within the saddle to pedal fairly than standing up on the bike. While you get up, you’re utilizing extra of your individual physique weight to push towards the resistance on the pedals, David says. Sitting down isolates your legs extra and should make them stronger over time.

Goal to take an indoor biking class no less than 4 occasions per week for those who’re desperate to see outcomes, he says. That leaves time for separate strength-training exercises, for those who resolve to elevate weights. If not, you would possibly even be capable to cycle six occasions per week to actually maintain your self constant and on the trail to progress, he says.

If you happen to’re actually in search of a problem and also you’re an skilled exerciser already, experiment with performing some lower-body power coaching earlier than an indoor biking class. “It actually burns these legs out,” David says.

Irrespective of how you propose to train, if you wish to construct muscle and power, you must push your limits, David provides. Your exercises ought to really feel difficult and get even more durable over time as you develop extra snug, an idea referred to as progressive overload. “Even when it’s [picking up weights that are] one pound heavier, one pound is bigger than the final time you probably did it,” he says. “It’s about including the resistance slowly, sticking to it, and believing that you just’re already robust.”