While rolling my eyes at my Facebook “friends” posting more feed clogging videos and photos from their gym sessions, it got me thinking why don’t they post more riding photos and video? Can’t you just get fit from riding a BMX bike? It would be far more interesting for me at least. In a hunt for a professional answer to the question I asked Bruce Morris what his take was. Bruce is a fitness professional with over 25 years of experience, so there are few people better qualified. Here’s what he had to say.

Riding a BMX bike. It’s something you did as a kid right? You might have even raced a little, or rode the skate park with your mates. It was for many, a bike you had before you grew up and got a real bike, one with gears and suspension. Or a car. Then it was thrown in the shed and forgotten about.

Rock up to a race meeting these days in Australia and you’ll be surprised by the number of adults racing BMX. Riding alongside the kids on the same track on the same sized bikes (and cruisers, BMX bikes with lager 24 inch wheels). In some cases, these adults have children racing, others have never stopped since they jumped on a bike in the 1980s. The appeal for many lies with the fact that they compete in the same sport as their kids, on the same day and it gets them fit.

Hang on! Riding this little bike around a track that is usually no longer more than 400m is getting these guys fit? How hard can it be? Well, take a break for a minute, head out to your local track and do a lap. Flat out? I’ll wait…..

So, how’d that feel? Ah, thought so. Not so great. You did one lap that took you about 40 seconds and then you had to lay on the ground for about 15 minutes sucking in oxygen that you swear had been in the air a minute or so ago and now seems to have disappeared. You thought you were fit huh?

What you’re feeling is oxygen debt and now your body is madly trying to replenish all the oxygen you just depleted from your muscles and your blood stream. You also just drained all the glycogen from your muscles and your body is also busy replenishing this as well. BMX is an “anaerobic/lactate” exercise which is perhaps the most demanding on the various energy systems that your body can draw upon to function. Most of us know that running is an aerobic type of exercise, say at a 5 minute per kilometre pace, and a 100m sprint is a pure anaerobic exercise. Anaerobic simply means “without oxygen”. When you run at a 5 minute per kilometre pace, your muscles can have the oxygen they are using replaced by the lungs during the event.

So, are these men and women getting fitter by riding their BMX bikes around the track? It depends on your definition of fitness. As a fitness professional of over 25 years, I worked closely with your everyday person (like yourself maybe) who joined the gym to “lose some weight and get fit” What did this mean I would (and still do) ask myself? Well, with the average Aussie now classified as obese or overweight, the weight loss is a no brainer. Plenty of evidence of the health issues associated with obesity. But what does being “fit” mean to the average person? Improving fitness usually means that they want to increase their aerobic (or cardiovascular) fitness so that everyday tasks such as walking up a set of stairs doesn’t leave them short of breath. Or running around the park with the kids without feeling like they’re about to die. Cardiovascular fitness relates to the strength of your heart and its ability to pump blood as well as the transportation of oxygen around the body and the muscle’s ability to use it in the energy creation process.

There’s that term again, “aerobic”. This is why the majority of people I saw, and still see, equate aerobic style of exercise (say running for 45 minutes) as the pathway to increasing fitness and decreasing body weight. Let’s hit the road! Hang on, not so fast. We’re here to answer the question “can riding a BMX bike get me fit?”

Yes it can! But only if you ride it with intensity in the same manner as an athlete training would. Now you don’t have to train like an Olympian, but riding a BMX bike up to the café won’t cut it. You may as well don the lycra if that’s your thing and jump on the roadie. The term intensity is the key here. Intensity and frequency of training.

BMX racing has a somewhat unique set of demands on your body and its energy systems. You have to use 100% of your power to accelerate out of the gate, spin your legs at a RPM higher than a track cyclist, and negotiate obstacles. There’s no “glide” period like in a 400m track event. You go as hard as you can from the gate to the finish line in around 30-45 seconds. To push your body to last this long at this intensity requires a lot of interval training. This is an exercise mode that’s been gaining a lot of following lately and there is research backing up what people are finding, that this short, sharp type of training makes them feel good. Feel fit. Most of this type of exercise can be wrapped up as HITT. High Intensity Interval Training. It burns a lot of calories, increases muscle mass and increases cardiovascular fitness through stressing the heart muscle. There are many adaptations occurring that I won’t bore you with, but these occur if you apply this type of approach to your BMX riding.

Most of the mums and dads you see out there on the track are incidentally applying these training principals through going to “gate nights” at the track once or twice a week. Racing a club night once a week and maybe racing a bigger meeting on the weekend. And if they have kids, they might also spend an hour at a track with them riding at another time. Most of this riding is interval training. Short efforts, followed by a rest, and then repeating a number of times. This is what is getting them fitter, burning calories and helping them lose weight. They’re spending 3 hours of more a week riding their BMX bike. And if they are taking it a bit serious, they are probably weight training once or twice a week too.

This brings me to the final point; this is working for them because they are having fun. Alongside the physiological changes, there’s the immense satisfaction of acquiring new skills in bike control, spending time with the family or mates and achieving race results.

I have been asked for fitness advice by thousands of people over the years. One of the most common questions is what works? Well, my answer is always consistency. Especially when it comes to weight loss because you can take in calories at a rate you can never burn them. Weight loss is long game. If you enjoy your exercise modality, you’ll stick to it.

There you have it, riding a BMX can increase your fitness. But you have to apply the same principals as if you were an athlete training for a 400m track event. As shown though, this will happen if you pick up a training routine like the example above. Your cardiovascular fitness will improve, your strength and power will increase and if you stay off the pies, you’ll drop body fat as well.

About Bruce Morris #84

• Brisbane Australia
• BMX Racer – 35+ years
• Fitness Professional – 25+ years of operating gyms and training people
• Coach 84 BMX Training – Coaching the 30+ racers. Spanning performance, fitness and healthiness