Does Biking Make Your Butt Bigger? – Booty on Bike

Does Cycling Make Your Butt Bigger?

No doubt, a regular biking routine can help you lose weight, reduce the size of your butt and get in shape. As it’s an excellent exercise, it reduces the fat in your lower body, helping you tone down, reshape your butt and strengthen your leg muscles. While you may notice a reduction in fat around your butt as it looks slimmer, biking doesn’t really make your butt bigger or smaller. It merely changes the appearance to a more attractive one. Therefore, you, too, should use biking to burn down fat and try some strength training exercises to lift up your booty and get an instant confidence boost. 

Lose Fat By Fat Ass Riding

The thought of attending yet another aerobics session at the local health club can be nightmarish for some people. And rightly so, there’s not much you can do when the time is limited. A nine to five job, tending to friends and family, hitting the gym for regular exercise, and other household chores leave little room to shrink in another aerobics session into your schedule. 

So, what you should really do is, put on your helmet and go biking. It will be an exercise as well as provide you an opportunity to breathe in some fresh air, enjoy the scenery and shrink the size of the backside that’s gotten a little too big. According to medical health professionals, riding a bike can help you lose as many as 500 calories in one hour. 

Interval Training 

Add some interval training into your cycling session. It can really help you blast through fat, burn all the excess calories and focus on the leg and glute muscles. Set regular intervals, such as 5 minutes of riding the bike at your regular pace and one minute of vigorous peddling. To mix up your exercise routine, you can add a few miles of the uphill climb instead of just peddling faster. 

If you are thinking about choosing a good bike for yourself, you should consider purchasing a beautiful gravel bike under $2000.

Interval training like this can assist you to take 15 – 20 minutes off of your exercise schedule without disturbing your daily calorie burn count. 

Add Strength Training 

Some people believe there’s no need to add strength training to their regular exercise regime as it already engages the butt muscles to a great extent. It’s a wrong approach. We recommend doing strength training nevertheless. Strength training exercises like lunges, squats, and donkey kicks all help you build the muscles. 

They help reshape your butt into a more attractive composure. Moreover, strength training balances your lower body exercises with the help of upper body moves like bicep curls, dumbbell rows, arm raises, and chest presses. Hence, you look lean and toned from the top of the body to the bottom. 

High-Intensity Training 

Riding a bike is often regarded as a form of high-intensity training.  Whether you are taking indoors riding classes or going outdoors on steep terrain to test your stamina, cycling builds endurance. The up and down legs movement leads to one of the most efficient forms of cardio. 

Moreover, it burns body fat and speeds up your metabolism. Because it is high-intensity training, its effects are apparent in the form of fat loss rather than muscle gain. This is because, during high-intensity exercises, muscles have to work much harder as compared to regular exercise sessions. 

Does Spinning Build Muscle?

Short answer: No 

Long answer: As we already discussed, you don’t gain more muscle when riding. The human body builds muscle only when you put enough pressure on that part of the muscle. For instance, when you weightlift. The stress during such exercise tears opens the muscles. Once the muscle heals and repairs itself, it grows larger and stronger. Hence you get muscle gains. 

Unfortunately, none of this happens during cycling. This is because it does not put enough pressure on your muscles to cause growth. In fact, too much cycling or cardio can actually reduce your muscle gains. Cardio does this by slowly letting your muscles recover and burn up calories needed for muscle gains.

Climbing a Hill 

The same is the case with climbing a hill. When you are climbing a hill while cycling, you are putting intense pressure on your butt muscles. Your legs have to work hard and access their full power potential to push you and the bike up the hill. However, most hill climbs last only for a few minutes (unless you ride your bike through a mountainous region). 

Therefore, the pressure exerted is not enough to build bigger buttock muscles. Sure, climbing up a hill makes your legs and butt muscles stronger, but strength doesn’t always mean an increase in size. Hence, you may not see a change in the size of your booty if you regularly climb a hill. 

How to Use Glutes when Cycling

Most people have really weak butt muscles due to inactive glutes. Therefore, their muscles in the buttock region don’t work as they should while cycling. Human anatomy is such that if you don’t regularly engage and target your glutes, they get lazy and other muscles take over, such as quads. This is why people often complain about sore quads after cycling but never feel the difference in the shape of their butt. 

But, you don’t have to be one of those people. 

Below are four tips to get an excellent butt workout (and shape) by cycling. 

Tip 1: Visualize and Activate Your Cycling Glutes 

First and foremost, it’s really important that you visualize and activate your cycling glutes in order to really make cycling beneficial for your buttocks. Focus on using your butt muscles as you pedal through the terrain. Visualize in your mind how every butt muscle is squeezing with each downstroke. 

To help with this visualization, I imagine that every downstroke is just like doing a single leg squat as you push through the heel from a bent leg stance. When you are making this motion, try squeezing and contracting your glutes. This way, you can activate the muscles in this region.

Tip 2: Setup Your Cycling Position 

In order to get the most out of your butt workouts, set up your bicycle in a way that your legs are in an ideal position to activate the glutes as you cycle. Remember, this position will be different for everyone depending on their physical features. 

Think of this motion like a squat. Ideally, you can target the glutes when your seat is positioned, such as your knees being bent close to a 90 degrees angle as you pedal up. This way, when you push down, it will be like doing a single-leg squat. 

At the same time, remember that experts don’t suggest setting up your seat so high that your knees need to travel above the horizontal line of your butt. It can lead to knee pain. So, do your research and use common sense. Everyone’s body mechanics are different. Use a position that is most comfortable for you. 

Tip 3: Stand up When Hill Climbing 

Another excellent way to get a great butt workout is by standing up when the road gets steep. Give your gears a break. Or better still, keep your bike in a higher gear. It will give your pedals good resistance. And then, as you stand up to pedal, keep your torso as upright and straight as possible. Don’t lean forward too much. You will notice that standing up helps you feel the glute muscles. 

You can also experiment with this position to see what really makes you feel the glutes. It’s a very similar motion to step-ups which are considered great exercise for the butt. Additionally, don’t just let your quads do all the hard work. Focus your mind on contracting and squeezing your glutes to get the best results. 

Tip 4: Push through your heels 

Nearly every butt exercise has one thing in common – an instruction to push through your heels (not toes). Utilize the same when cycling to engage your butt muscles. 

However, you have to be careful when pushing through your heels. If you push too hard, you risk knee pain or even knee injury. Only apply this tip if your seating position on the bike is just like a good squatting position. 

Some people may find it difficult to perform due to their body proportions and bike mechanics. In such a case, don’t risk injury. You should seek professional help first. 

Is Biking Good for your Butt?

So, that’s all about it. No matter what your end goals are, rest your body properly. Whether you want to lose your belly fat or sculpt an attractive bottom, let your body recover. Put your bike in the garage at least one day every week. Besides, always schedule your strength training sessions with a difference of 24 hours. This will give your body an entire day to rest and relax. Most importantly, before trying different exercises (especially weight training), seek professional help from your doctor and check which exercises you can perform without tearing your body down. That’s all for now. Thank you for reading!