Cycling helps the mind and body, so we’ve highlighted some of the key benefits that you might not know about, plus a couple of the obvious (but very important) ones.

The NHS recommends that adults get 2.5 hours of moderate intensity exercise each week. That sounds like a lot, but biking makes it easy. Ride to work one day this week, ride to the shops another and then go for an hours spin at the weekend, and you’ve made it.

Here’s how you’ll benefit.

1. It builds aerobic fitness

Cycling builds great cardiovascular fitness. The bicycle is probably the world’s most effective way of converting the beat of your heart into forward momentum. Every breath and beat translates beautifully into speed, giving you an instant reward for working out your heart, your lungs and your overall cardiovascular system. Yes, you can achieve a similar result on a stationary bike, but why not explore and take in the scenery.

2. It builds muscular strength

It’s known that your legs, specifically calves, hamstrings, glutes and quads, get a great workout from cycling. However, throw in some technical landscape through mountain biking, urban commuting or even just sprinting out of the saddle and you hit arms, shoulders, back and key core muscles.

3. It’s low impact exercise

Cycling is a low impact exercise. Low impact activities like cycling may actually promote the healing and recovery of damaged joints, allowing you to return to higher impact activities more quickly.

4. It’s good for hand-eye coordination

By coordinating the action of feet, hands, speed, and balance, you build and reinforce neural pathways, hand-eye coordination and general control. This has a great benefit for cross training as well. Yes, cycling can make you better at playing other sports.

5. Cycling makes you a better person

In-depth scientific studies have shown that cyclists are, on average, 40 to 50% more awesome. Spending more time outside, being fitter, being stronger, having a dramatically reduced carbon footprint and being your own self-reliant mode of transport are just some of the ways that bike riders become better people.