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Cardiovascular Exercise

Cardio’ means any kind of exercise that works the heart – this includes gardening and walking, very simple exercises, but they help to keep your heart healthy. At the gym, you may notice those heart rate monitors on the small screen of the exercise machine and a small electrical sensor on the side of the machine, which measures your heart rate. With cardio, there are certain ‘zones’ to enter that will benefit your body – the fat burning; and the cardio. When fat burning, you are normally working at 60 percent of your maximum heart rate, with cardio, 80 percent.

If you are new to exercise and you want to feel fit, as well as lose fat, cardio machines are beneficial. For example, the cross trainer, similar to running but is much easier on the joints. Because it is an easier exercise than perhaps rowing or running, the heart rate remains lower – around 60 percent than it would if you were performing a more strenuous exercise – 80 percent. When the heart is worked at a lower rate, the body starts to burn fat. This offers heart benefits obviously as you are forcing it to beat harder, but the great thing about any cardio exercise is that you can work at your own intensity. If you find the exercise easier – challenge yourself. This will really build up the body’s fitness.

Working out heart rate

So how do you know you are working your heart out at its 80% maximum? By calculating your target heart rate. Subtract your age from 220. This will indicate your maximum heart rate. Ideally, you want to work out at around 60 – 90 percent of your maximum. This is calculated by multiplying your maximum rate by 0.6. Low intensity exercise is effective because it burns fat off the entire body.

Another thing to remember, whether you are working at 60 percent or 80 percent of your body’s maximum heart rate, your body will burn calories, and lots of them. Cycling for instance, whether on the road or used at the gym, uses the large muscles of the legs – quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteus, and the calves. The leg muscles house a large section of muscles and when these are worked at, they burn many calories. In turn, your heart starts to pump more oxygen round the body and you will find yourself slightly out of breath. Continued cardio exercise will improve your fitness and make you want to challenge your body.

When is cardio working?

Another great way to work out if you are training hard enough is to try to engage in a conversation. If you can carry on a conversation while pushing your heart into the beneficial realm, guaranteed you are training hard enough. Another way you can test your intensity is if your body starts to perspire. You can also listen to your body rather than look for signs. Our body never lies. If you are feeling short of breath, reduce the speed of your exercise until you feel well enough to increase the intensity. In addition, do you feel that you could continue the exercise for hours? If so, you are perhaps working a little too easy. To work the heart at a beneficial rate, you should not be able to continue the exercise for hours, but also not work out at an intensity where you have to stop only a couple of minutes later. Find the balance and train for a minimum of 20 – 30 minutes.

With any kind of strain, stop the exercise immediately. Listen to your body – so any pains or unfamiliar aches are pointing to an underlying problem that may require care and attention or R.I.C.E – Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation for exercise injuries.

If you are new to any form of exercise, take it easy. Do not force your body into a state of breathlessness – work at it week by week. Regular cardio two to three times a week is beneficial for the heart. Your only aim is to build a bigger heart and that is what cardio training offers.

Cardio exercises

So which exercises count as cardio? Walking, gardening, dancing, jogging, skipping, cycling, the list goes on. Let us discuss walking for a second. The great thing about walking is that you can start as slowly as you want to, and when it is too easy and you feel no fitness gains, you can start to increase the pace and therefore increase the heart rate and burn calories. Walking tones the abdominals, legs, buttock muscles and improves the posture, but puts less pressure on the joints. It also increases the metabolism in the long term and pumps oxygen round the body to give a glowing, youthful effect to the skin, although any form of cardio exercise will grant that. If you like a challenge, aim toward power walking which, per mile, burns more calories than running.

Cardio exercise will continue to burn calories long after the workout has completed, but for how long. I would estimate about 1 – 2 hours afterward. Obviously, if you train your body regularly, your metabolism (the rate at which you burn calories) will remain much higher. Try to link it to anaerobic (weight) training and your body really will become a fat burning machine. Consistency is the key to good heart he

Posted by GenXXL Staff on Sep 18th, 2009 and filed under Workout. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response by filling following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site

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