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hristmas is a magical time filled with family gatherings, delicious (and caloric) meals and a festive atmosphere that often challenges our usual cycling exercise routine. For cycling enthusiasts, maintaining fitness during the holidays can seem tricky, but with a little planning and motivation, it’s not only possible, but also a great way to balance celebrations, excess and personal wellness. Cycling helps to avoid the sedentary lifestyle typical of the cold season, to release endorphins and to strengthen cardiovascular and muscular endurance – in addition to the mental benefits, as it allows us to relax and take our minds off the problems of everyday life. It is for this reason that it is so convenient to practice cycling during the festive season. But how? Here’s what you can do to keep up your Christmas cycling routine.
The benefits of cycling at Christmas
Cycling during the holidays not only burns off extra calories from holiday meals, but also reduces stress and improves sleep quality. By pedaling, you release endorphins that help combat the fatigue and low mood that can arise in winter. In addition, maintaining your exercise routine will allow you to start the new year in good physical and mental shape, without forgetting that this way your performance will not diminish, especially your sprinting capacity -which is what you lose the fastest, in a period of 3 days to a week, approximately-, as well as your muscle strength -since muscle mass usually begins to reduce around a week-.
Christmas Cycling: How to keep up your cycling exercise routine
During the holidays, overeating and cold temperatures can reduce motivation to get out on the bike. Add to this limited time due to family events and commitments. However, it’s important to remember that cycling not only helps maintain fitness, but also improves your mood, which is ideal for these busy times, as mentioned above. And to get you through this time of year, we recommend that you take the following tips into account.
Plan a suitable workout for Christmas
Generally, during the Christmas and holiday season, time is very much against us as we have to combine high work (or study) loads with family obligations and events. We recommend, therefore, that you plan a new workout adapted to this situation. As they say, little is better than nothing, and in this case it applies perfectly because with little you will avoid losing fitness and you will find it much easier to return to a state in which you were when these celebrations have passed. You can choose to reduce the length of your sessions or eliminate some of your daily rides, for example, as well as opt for less demanding workouts.
Be prepared with cycling clothes for the cold weather
Lack of time is one of the biggest complications when it comes to cycling at Christmas time, as we explained in the previous point, but also the cold -which is the main reason why we tend to stay at home, especially when it is extreme-. It is essential, therefore, to equip yourself with cycling clothing for extreme cold, such as waterproof windbreaker jackets and cycling gloves for extreme cold, among others. Cold weather cycling clothing is designed to protect from wind and maintain body heat without sacrificing breathability. It includes the aforementioned windproof jackets and gloves, as well as thermal jerseys, fleece-lined bib shorts, boot covers and under-helmet hats. We recommend the use of Gore-Tex type materials and technical fabrics that repel water and allow ventilation.
Keep a balance in your nutrition
There is no Christmas without some gastronomic excess, and that’s fine. The key is moderation and balance. You can enjoy the holiday dishes, but try to compensate with lighter, more nutritious meals between celebrations, so you won’t have so many complications to resume exercise. A balanced diet with enough carbohydrates, proteins and healthy fats will help you have energy for your cycling trips. Also, remember to maintain good hydration, something we tend to forget in winter.
Christmas, indoor cycling and ways to maintain your routine
The best solution to combat the lack of time and the cold of these dates, in addition to what we explained so far, is indoor cycling. Making use of an indoor cycling bike or a cycling roller will allow you to train comfortably at home during these dates without any complications, since you will avoid wasting time in traveling to the route area, but also because you can continue with your cycling workouts on days with rain, wind or excessive cold, all from the comfort of home. In addition, you will be able to get more out of your workouts because indoor cycling is more efficient. In general, when cycling outdoors it is common to spend between 10% and 15% of the time riding at 0 watts, either because of downhills, traffic or any other interruption that may occur along the way. In indoor cycling these inconveniences are eliminated from the formula, thus increasing the efficiency of each pedal stroke.
At ZYCLE you have the possibility to take your workouts to another level thanks to the advanced technology of the ZBike 2.0; but also thanks to the latest generation of bike rollers, which offer the most realistic cycling sensations and have the latest features on the market, as is the case of the ZDrive MAX, ZPro and RooDol by ZYCLE. Do you dare to try it? Take a look at the catalog and don’t miss the opportunity to stay in shape at Christmas and at any other time of the year with your indoor cycling workouts.
