eBikes as a Wonderful Health and Fitness Tool by Terry Brightwater
About Terry Brightwater.
Terry lives in the Afan Forest, South Wales, UK, with his wife Jay Brightwater.
He is a professional Life Coach, specialising in “Emotional Fitness” for over 18 years.
Terry’s passion for health and fitness, has spanned over the last 40 years, mainly being expressed through cycling, weight training and healthy eating. He has been using an eMTB (electric mountain bike), for the last 4 years and loves it.
Terry is also an admin of the thriving “eBike Smile eMTB Community” Facebook group, since it started in November 2016.
Understanding Recovery and Over-training.
Back in my youth as a teenager, my lust and enthusiasm for a fitter and stronger body was bordering on obsession! My daily routine of six days a week, included a cycle of 8 miles to the gym, a weight-training workout for 2 hours, then cycle of 8 miles back home again. On my day off, I would get a lift to the local swimming baths and swim for 2 hours! I did this for 5 years until I hit my twenties. By this time, after several competition wins my body had sustained many injuries and exhaustion from over training. A lot of the time I was working out at 80 to 100% of my physical capacity. From my personal experience and from professional advice at the time, I decided to give more time and energy to recovery time, in between cycle rides and weight training workouts.
I had learnt the hard way, but I really got it and this fitness recovery wisdom has stuck with me ever since. The basis of this wisdom, comes from many trials and studies which conclude that if we keep within 50 to 70 % of our work capacity, both in resistance training and cardiovascular training, our ability to recover from the workout is much greater, thus allowing us to be able to exercise the next day without feeling overstretched or exhausted!
Choice! eBikes Greatest Fitness Benefit.
A pedalec eBike gives us assistance when we ride it and best of all, we get to choose how much or how little assistance it does give us. We can choose to have a full capacity workout on our eBike, at 80 to 100% of our physical capacity, or we can choose to use our eBike at between 50 and 70% of our physical capacity, ensuring we can workout the next day, if we choose. This in itself makes the eBike a wonderful health and fitness tool! The eBike, with it’s different modes of assistance, ensures we have more choice in how we workout and recover. This is not just been my own experience, but the experience of many of our eBike Smile Facebook members! At the last count, nearly 4,500 of them!
One of the most regular posts we get from members, are about people having bought a regular bike to get fit on, but most never end up using the regular bike, because they are too unfit to use it on a regular basis! The bike just ends up sitting in the garage. Riders often end up trying out an eBike out of curiosity and are blown away as they experience the inevitable eBike smile! They have the fun of choosing which eBike suits them most, but keep their old MTB as they are sure they will get back to riding it. However, as if by magic, they are riding their new eBike almost everyday! Thanks to the various levels of pedal assist the eBike gives us, we then get to choose how hard or easy we climb that next hill. Our eBike Smile members get fitter and fitter, because of the greater choices the eBike gives us. It makes this possible from where our current fitness is, right now! No grueling pain threshold to go through each time, unless you choose to!
The added health benefits of getting fresh air and a healthy dose of Mother Nature also ensures that many riders experience benefits both mentally and emotionally, as it relaxes and stimulates endorphins as well. Any off-road cycle invigorates the biochemistry in our bodies. Whether riding through a forest, along a coastline, or higher up in the mountains, hillsides or moorland, creating emotional experiences of happiness, joy, bliss and gratitude. Our Facebook group is a testament to this, by the thousands of photos, of eBike smiles, that get posted all the time. The pedalec eBike makes all this possible.
Many eBike Smile members also report going on rides with family and friends who vary in health and fitness. This levels the playing field of group dynamics, which brings couples, friends and family closer together. But the details of this I shall save for a future blog called “eBikes and how they bring community together”.
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