Category: Cardio Exercise

Cardio exercise and training cover a wide range of activities that allow the use of major muscle groups in the body in a continuous manner. But most importantly, the very aim of cardiovascular exercise and training is mainly to improve the heart muscles. For cardio training to be effective, it should at least try to elevate about 60 to 85 percent of the individual?s considered maximum heart rate. There are various physical activities that can be considered as part of one?s cardio training. Such training includes walking or jogging, running, swimming, rowing and cycling as well as doing other aerobic exercises.

There are several benefits that one can enjoy from doing regular cardio training. Doing them on a regular basis can greatly help the body even become healthier in the long run. Here are just some of the benefits that cardio training can provide:

1. It boosts one?s energy levels. Regular cardio exercise such as running or swimming can eventually help in improving a person?s energy levels. When the body goes through regular cardio training, it slowly adapts and is more able to cope up with the added strenuous physical activity. People become less tired while doing more work. In the process, they can become more energetic. Physical endurance is developed and improved over time through cardio workouts.

2. It boosts body metabolism. A good benefit of regular cardio exercise and training is through having a better metabolism. As cardio exercises help the heart muscles cope up with added physical activities, it also helps the body to burn more calories more efficiently. Cardio training helps improve the body?s metabolism in order to handle for the energy needs of the added physical activity. This can signal the body to burn up some added fuel to keep its different functions up and running. With the regular training, the body then tends to keep the metabolism up. This then helps a person burn more calories which can be very convenient for losing weight.

3. It helps improve weight control. Regular cardio exercises can also help one maintain and keep a desired weight level. With a more improved metabolism, the body can burn more calories more efficiently. Regular cardio training can also help build up muscles through the physical activity that the body goes through. With more muscles and calories being burned by the body daily, losing some weight may be experienced which occurs as the process of burning the stored fats in the body starts. Up to a certain point when an ideal body weight is reached, people can then better maintain their weight through regular cardio training.

4. It helps prevent heart disease. Regular cardio training can also help in the prevention of heart disease. The heart also has muscles that make it work more effectively. Strengthening them can help the heart grow stronger and delay or prevent the development of diseases associated with the heart. Aside from training programs help strengthen the heart muscles, they also help strengthen the lungs as well. Conditions associated with a sedentary lifestyle such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease can be prevented with regular cardio exercise and training.

Aerobic training is the only form of exercise where you use two sources of energy: carbs (blood glucose) and fat.

The Surgeon General advises us that, to be healthy, we need to exercise at least three to four times a week, in an aerobic zone, for 20-30 minutes. That is a standard to keep your heart healthy, not to lose body fat by burning calories.

Here’s what you need to understand. For the first 20 minutes you are exercising in your aerobic zone, you are burning about 80% carbohydrates and 20% fat.

For the next 20 minutes, you are burning about 50% carbs and 50% fat. You’re getting better. Now you’re gonna start to lose some of that weight as the fat is being burned!

So what happens if you start getting into the above 40 minute range?

A reversal. You are now burning about 20% carbs and about 80% fat.

YES!

In other words, when you work your way up to 45 – 60 minutes of aerobic exercise, you’ve been doing some serious fat burnin’!

So how long you exercise aerobically will be determined by your goals.

Question: I walk – that’s it. I walk 4 times a week for 20 minutes. Is this doing me any good?

Answer: Of course it is! Any kind of sustained physical activity will do you good. Obviously your getting more benefit from walking those 20 minutes than the person who is sitting at home during those same 20 minutes watching tv. You must enjoy it – you’re keeping at it. So you’ve attained one of the goals we’ve talked about elsewhere. Find an exercise you like to do and then do it on a continuous basis.

Now how much good this is doing depends on how you’re walking. If your hands are in your pocket and you’re casually strolling, well, it is better than nothing. But if your walking at a brisk pace and swinging your arms as you’re walking, it’s a lot better than nothing. You need to get the heart pumping a little faster than normal and keep it there for 20 – 30 minutes to get the most benefit.

To really get the most out of walking, every so often jog a little. Even 15 – 20 seconds. Then go back to walking. Do that a few times and you’ll notice even more improvement. One last tip would be to extend your walk to 30 minutes if you can.

However, if you want to just keep doing what you’re doing now. As long as you keep taking a brisk 20 minute walk regularly, you will definitely be helping your body stay fit. So keep on walkin’.

Workout Time Depends on Intensity

Higher intensity activities require less time spent. Lower intensity
activities require more time spent.

Light-Intensity Activities:

• Walking slowly
• Golf, powered cart
• Swimming, slow treading
• Gardening or pruning
• Bicycling, very light effort
• Dusting or vacuuming
• Conditioning exercise, light stretching or warm up

Moderate-Intensity Activities:

(more…)

Both low and high intensity exercises will help you to burn off body fat. The question
is which is the most effective to burn off more body fat?

Scientists discovered that during intensive exercises, your body burns glycogen,
a form of stored carbohydrates stored in your liver and muscles for energy. During low
intensity exercises, your body will burn a lot of fat.

Does it work? Well, even though lots of people are working out with low intensity routines, you can see many are not losing weight. Why not?

The scientists were right when they said the human body burns more body fat during low intensity exercises like walking or swimming. However, during a high intensity exercise such as running, the body will burn a lot more calories. Even if some of the calories burned are from glycogen, there are still many fat calories burned as well.

When your store of glycogen gets low, the carbohydrates from your food you eat will later get converted into glycogen to fill up the store and won’t be converted to body fat when they are left unused for energy.

High intensity cardio exercise will juice up your metabolism even after you have completed your workout. What this means, is that your body will continue to burn body fat hours after you have left the gym. This effect is nearly non existent in low intensity cardio or aerobic workout.

Accumulatively, your body will burn up more and more calories during and after you have finished a high intensity cardio exercise then it will with low intensity.

You can add high intensity exercises into your cardio workout by introducing some interval
training. You can walk for 5 minutes or so, then break into some jogging for another 5 minutes or so. Then, walk briskly again until you have caught your breath and then sprint for a minute before you walk again. From this point, simply alternate your running and walking for the next 15 minutes until you are finished.

One of the best things about cardio is the more you do it, the more energy you’ll have. Cardio will help you to burn calories, although its more useful for keeping your energy levels high.

Very high intensity workouts are becoming more and more the norm, but you do have to be in shape for this. Basically, you warm up, then you sprint for 10 or 15 seconds, then slow down and recover. You then do it again. You work up to about 8 of these sprints and your workouts become more effective and actually shorter.