Cardiovascular Exercise: A Whole Body Workout

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Cardiovascular exercise or cardio is sustained physical actions, involving your body’s major muscle groups. Due to this consistent action, you can improve your breath control, heart rate acceleration, and other noticeable changes. Altogether, these effects on your body optimize your blood’s oxygen levels, which keeps you from feeling tired or fatigued.

Purpose of Cardiovascular Exercise

Basically, cardio exercises improve vital organ functions such as the lungs, heart, and even the circulatory system. Ultimately, you’ll gain better heart health, mood, metabolism, weight regulation, sleep, and mental health. Over time, this exercise makes the heart, lungs, and muscles more effective at utilizing oxygen.

Keep in mind, however, that complications such as unusual pain, extreme fatigue, and other alarming symptoms can arise by doing cardio. So, if you do experience health issues, stop and get medical attention immediately. For an activity to be considered cardio, it must do two things: boost the heart rate and increase breathing intensity to around 50% of its normal rate for about ten minutes. For example, core workouts and specific activities like weight lifting aren’t considered standard cardiovascular exercises since they don’t maintain high heart rate acceleration throughout your exercise session.

Types of Cardio

Various cardiovascular exercises can improve your heart rate and provide additional health benefits. If you like being outdoors, add brisk walking and running as great exercises. Likewise, try skating, roller-blading, and cycling to spice things up a bit and have fun. Want an exercise you can do with others? Add group sports such as basketball and soccer to your workout and make new friends while staying fit.

Conversely, you can do activities such as swimming, kayaking, and water aerobics if you prefer being in blue rather than green. Cardio exercises involving certain disciplines including martial arts and kickboxing can benefit the mind along with the body. Why not add dances like hip-hop or Zumba to your fitness routine for some fun? Incense and physically demanding cardiovascular exercises such as mountain climbing and rowing can benefit you if want to be tested.

You don’t need special equipment or even have to go anywhere to do cardio exercises. For example, stair-climbing and jumping rope are activities you can do at home to enhance your stamina and strengthen your leg muscles. Similarly, HIIT or High-Intensity Interval Training can provide great health benefits, so be sure to include bear crawls, jump squats, and burpees into your cardio routine.

The 3 Impacts of Cardio Fitness

A cardiovascular exercise is typically split into three categories: high-impact, low-pact, and no-impact. The cardio type you choose to take mostly influences the exercises you choose to do. For instance, engaging in high-impact cardio consists of activities that keep both feet off the ground. This type of cardio usually includes aerobics, jumping rope, and more advanced strength training exercises. Equally, weight-bearing exercises are great for strength training as it uses gravity and your body weight to get results.

In low-impact cardio, you do activities where only one foot has to remain on the ground at a time. These activities are mostly mundane and simple such as walking, hiking, and other forms of physical movement. If done with high-intensity, low-impact cardio provides plenty of health benefits, particularly for your bones and heart.

Unlike the other types, no-impact cardio are activities you can do in water or with little weight-bearing such as water aerobatics and speed swimming. What’s more? Outdoor activities like bicycling can be considered no-impact exercises as they weaken the pull of gravity on your body. Following an injury or developing arthritic conditions, no-impact cardio provides a great alternative. Due to its structure, this exercise takes away reliance on movement caused by land-based movements, saving you from potential injury.

Final Thoughts

To get the most out of your cardiovascular exercise, you should work out at least 3 times per week. With a flexible schedule, you’ll have more options to work out anytime without trouble. Furthermore, you can get as much out of a brief 5-minute exercise as a full-brown workout session if you keep your intensity high the entire period. As a beginner, you should begin with low or moderate-intensity cardiovascular exercises such as walking, cycling, or swimming. Over time, however, you should aspire to increase your intensity and workout duration to improve energy levels and overall health.

Disclaimer: This article is intended simply to provide information. It does not replace the medical advice of a physician or other medical professional. Please speak with your doctor or therapist if you have any questions or concerns.

Article originally written by David Gilbert.