Benefits Of Cardiovascular Workouts
Giving you essentially the same benefits as strength training, cardiovascular toning workouts greatly benefit your heart and circulatory system. Strength training tones and works muscle groups, while cardiovascular training primarily works your heart, lungs, and circulatory system. To reap the greatest positive health benefits and weight loss, perform strength training workouts three times a week and cardiovascular toning workouts three to four times a week.
For toning and maintenance, do cardio workouts for about 15 to 30 minutes. For weight loss, do cardio for 30 to 60 minutes at a moderate intensity, or break it up into intervals of high intensity alternating with intervals of moderate intensity. For an effective cardiovascular workout, it is necessary to safely elevate your heart rate and make it work harder than it normally does. Over time, this regular, controlled increase in your heart rate will increase your physical health in a myriad of ways.
The Following are some benefits of doing regular cardiovascular toning workouts:
It’s good for your heart: Cardiovascular workouts tone your heart muscles so they work more efficiently. This increases the heart’s ability to pump more blood and oxygen through the body. Your heart doesn’t work as hard, which lowers your blood pressure. It also lowers your resting heart rate.
It increases your metabolism: Your metabolic rate is the rate at which your body burns calories. This rate increases when you exercise regularly. This means you continue to receive benefits of exercise even after you’ve finished exercising. You’ll burn more calories just sitting around than you would have if you hadn’t worked out.
It helps to manage your diabetes: Cardiovascular exercise helps regulate the level of your blood sugar by increasing the muscles’ ability to utilize glucose. It also reduces the occurrence of major swings in blood sugar levels.
It will help decrease depression, anxiety, and stress: Performing cardiovascular exercise releases brain chemicals that improve your mood. Study after study has proven that cardio workouts (as well as strength training workouts) reduce participants’ levels of depression to the same extent that taking anti-depressant medications reduce it. These natural brain chemicals also help us to better deal with stress and anxiety in our everyday lives.
It will help lower your cholesterol: Cardiovascular workouts help lower your overall cholesterol levels while increasing the level of good, or “HDL” cholesterol. This reduces your chances of developing clogged arteries, which is a leading cause of heart attacks.
Which cardiovascular exercise is important? Low intensity or high? The fact is both exercise methods will burn off fat. But the most effective form is high intensity workouts.
From research, scientists discovered that during intense exercise, the body burns glycogen faster than low intensity work outs. Glycogen is stored carbohydrates, most commonly found in the liver and around the muscles. Low intensity work outs will burn fat but over a longer period. You will see most people working out, doing low intensity cardiovascular movements. Visit your local health club and how many people do you see sprinting? Not many, and that’s why they don’t seem to shift the weight so quickly.
High intensity workouts such as running don’t only help you burn more calories faster, but also shapes your body giving it a more muscular look. For example, when you sprint your quadriceps get a full workout as well as the rest of your body leaving giving you a more shapely, toned, muscular physique.
Doing resistance exercise and high intensity cardiovascular workout is a great way to burn body fat and give you an impressive physique.
Did you know high intensity cardiovascular exercise will boost your metabolism many hours after you have completed your workout? This essentially means, your body will continue to burn fat hours after you have left the health club. In low cardiovascular workouts, this is non-existent.
You can insert high intensity workouts to your training regimen by doing some interval training. For example, you can walk for 5 minutes, then jog for the same amount of time before doing a sprint for 1-2 minutes. By chopping and changing your intensity level, your body will tap into stored fat quicker. You can switch from low and high intense workouts depending on your workout.
Doing cardiovascular workouts regularly will help improve your daily energy levels. Most people rely on caffeine drinks such as coffee for a wakeup. However, exercising regularly will help you stay more alert, healthy and fresh.
When starting out exercise for the very first time, do low intensity workouts. Try and get used to exercising first and letting the body acclimatize to working out. Afterwards, increase your intensity level.
If you have never done cardiovascular workouts before, try giving it a shot. Working out regularly will make you feel and look good. When starting out, start slow just so that you can avoid burnout and injuries. Injuries can set you back a number of weeks and even months, so start slow and increase the intensity gradually.
Ways To Get Your Cardiovascular Workout In
A good cardiovascular workout is essential to any good workout plan; it’s a staple in the healthy lifestyle. Cardiovascular activity is the key element in weight loss and in heart healthy function. It is recommended that you spend a minimum of 30 minutes a day doing a cardiovascular workout in addition to other exercise activities. However, most people can only think of one way of getting their cardiovascular workout in, which means that their workouts become monotonous and boring after a while. With the following five cardiovascular workouts, however, nothing about exercise has to be boring.
The first way and easiest way to get your cardio in is to go for a run. This is probably what most people do anyway but you have to find ways to make it more interesting. Try running in different locations in and around your city. You might find a nice park or neighborhood to go for a run in on your way home. You may also like to run on your treadmill and watch television or a movie. These are some of the ways that you can spice up going for a run; running will always be important but it will also always be monotonous so try to change it up to make it more fun for you.
The second way to get a good cardio workout in is to go for a swim. Swimming can be refreshing, especially in the summer time and will work out more muscles than most other cardio workouts. Don’t worry if you don’t have a pool; most YMCA’s have pools available for little to no cost to you if you are a member (which is really cheap to be). Also, depending on your neighborhood, there is a city pool or a neighborhood pool that you can swim in.
The third way is to get yourself an air climber. It gives your legs and abdominal muscles a great opportunity to get toned and isn’t your ordinary workout, which means that you won’t be bored while doing it.
The fourth way is to go for a bike ride. That’s right, a bike ride can also count as cardiovascular activity. However, in order for it to do you some real good, you must ride with a good intensity, so if you have resistance settings on your bike, set them to a higher setting. Also, make sure that when you ride you are working the entire time and not coasting.
The fifth and final way to get a good cardiovascular workout is through aerobic activity. Most people would never think that aerobics could count as cardio, but it can. The important thing is that your heart rate stays consistent and high (within your calorie burning range). So with that, you can now not only have fun with your cardiovascular exercise, you have the tools to go forth and do your cardiovascular exercise.