WHEN considering the positives of Bathurst becoming a more cycle-friendly city, it is hard to go past the obvious health benefits for people of all ages.
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Constantly we are bombarded with messages telling us to be more active, but many people struggle to find the time.
The National Physical Activity Guidelines for adults in Australia recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most days of the week, with each session lasting at least 10 minutes.
An achievable goal some would say if they could ride safely to and from work.
Soon a clinical study through Charles Sturt University (CSU) is set to discover just how beneficial cycling really is.
CSU human movement PhD student Cheyne Donges recently tested around 50 men to see exactly what physical benefits occur in people who exercise compared to those who don’t.
“We had 50 guys come up on campus and we had four groups who had a 12 week intervention program,” he said.
“There was a cardio group who did cycling and cross training, there was a group who did weights, there was a group who did half and half and we had fourth group who were the control group and did nothing.”
Mr Donges said most of the people involved in the program were fairly well sedentary, some verging on being prediabetic. But after just 12 weeks of exercise the changes were clear.
“While the final testing is still yet to be done, early signs show that the cardio group has lost weight, the weight group has put on muscle mass and the combined group has stayed much the same, meaning internally they have probably lost fat mass and put on muscle mass,” Mr Donges said.
“Hopefully when we do a full body x-ray scan it should actually show to the nearest gram how much muscle and fat changes that have had internally.”
Of particular interest for Mr Donges was the fact that the people who did just cycling lost just as much weight around their stomachs as those who did the weight training.
So it goes to show that to lose weight, particularly around your stomach, you don’t need a gym membership or heavy weights equipment. You can just jump on a bike.
“When the cardio trainers came back from the bike test they also had a lower resting heart rate at any stage of the test,” Mr Donges added.
“Which goes to show that whether at rest or when you put it under a load, they had the lower resting heart rate which means they had a lot of beneficial changes in the cardiovascular system.”
As recently as 2003, The Australian Burden of Disease Study indicated that physical inactivity was the fourth leading cause of burden of disease in Australia.
Research has also shown physical inactivity increases all causes of mortality, doubles the risk of cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and obesity.
It also increases the risks of colon and breast cancer, high blood pressure, lipid disorders, osteoporosis, depression and anxiety.
Alarmingly, recent studies show more than 60 per cent of Australian adults and one-in-four children are overweight or obese. But according to this latest CSU study, turning your life around does not have to be a hard task. Particularly when you jump on a bike
“A lot of people who take up cardio exercise is because they want to lose weight,” Mr Donges said. “But the problem for people who start up walking or jogging is that they get a lot of knee and ankle injuries.
“That’s one of the advantages of cycling as it is low impact as well as being visually stimulating and proven to get results.
“You don’t necessarily have to go hard for an hour, you could ride to work for 15 to 20 minutes in the morning and do the same in the evening and that’s all you need a day.”
