It is common for a doctor to recommend some form of moderate exercise to a patient being treated for hypertension, diabetes, or other malady. But the suggestion often stops there and the patient is on their own to determine the best "moderate exercise." The patient will often go to a health club, or worse, attempt self-treatment.

The benefits of recreational cycling are:

- low or no impact to the body
- precise control over exercise stressors
- easy to quantify frequency, duration, intensity
- biomechanics not as difficult in cycling as other sports
- can be done with all members of the patient's family
- group setting promotes formation of a support network
- can be done indoors or outdoors year-round
- focus is on enjoyment and not the therapy

The Midlife Cycling program starts with basic core exercises and progresses through endurance, aerobic, and more strenuous exercise. The physician or therapist can constrain the patient's training to only those levels that are appropriate for the treatment. In addition to bicycles we use exercise balls, light hand weights, resistance bands and household objects in our training.

The CompuTrainer is an indoor cycling device that uses the patient's actual bicycle. It is attached to a computer so that we can monitor resistance in watts, heart rate, pedaling effort and more. Perhaps the best example of its use was in the post-rehabilitation exercise program for a 60-year old patient who was recovering from ACL replacement surgery. 14 weeks after surgery she climbed a 2000 ft pass on her bicycle. Read the case study here...

Midlife Cycling maintains professional liability insurance and has the patient sign the appropriate waivers or releases. All coaches are CPR and First Aid certified by the American Red Cross. We follow the best practices of USA Cycling and the American Council on Exercise.