Whenever weight loss and exercise come together in a sentence, the word ‘cardio’ is always near. However, including cardio exercises in your workout routine gives you much more than just maintaining your weight. Read on to learn more about what this type of exercise is, the benefits it offers, and how to create a safe and effective cardio routine!
What is Cardio Workout?
Cardio workout or sometimes referred to as aerobic exercise is a rhythmic activity performed to raise your heart rate to the level where you can burn fat and calories effectively. These activities can progressively challenge your most vital internal body organs (heart, lungs, and circulatory system) and therefore improve their function and performance.
The Main Benefits of Cardio Workout
The benefits of cardio go beyond just your heart! Here is a list of benefits you can reap by doing a cardio workout.
1. Improve Cardiovascular Health
Having a healthy heart is the most obvious benefit you can gain from a cardio workout. This is due to the fact that cardio exercise can make you increase your heart rate to pump more blood through the body. As a result, your heart, which is arguably one of the most important organs of your body, will be much stronger.
2. Enhance Brain Health
Besides your heart, your brain can also gain benefits from the cardio workouts! Performing regular cardio activities can strengthen the hippocampus, a part of the brain that deals with long and short-term memory.
In addition to that, a number of studies have also shown that cardio workout results in a lower risk of brain-related diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer
3. Improve your Mood
Regular cardio exercise may be effective to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, and the effects can be long-lasting. One vigorous cardio exercise session can help diminish symptoms for hours, and a regular schedule may significantly reduce them over time.
4. Strengthen your Immune System
Cardio exercise can also help your immune system fight bacterial infections because it changes your antibodies and white blood cells. With a regular cardio workout, the antibodies or white blood cells in your body will move around faster and therefore gain a better ability to find potential threats from bacteria.
A Beginner Cardio Workout Plan to Get You Moving
One thing about the cardio workouts is that you don’t need a lot of equipment to start doing it! Instead, you can perform cardio training at home by only working on your own body weight.
You can try to use the FIIT (frequency, intensity, time, and type) method when designing your cardio workout plan. Here's all you need to know about building a well-rounded cardio workout plan.
Low-Intensity Cardio Training
Low-intensity cardio training is a workout method to increase your heart rate to 57%–63% of your maximum heart rate for a steady and sustained period. This is the best workout plan for you who want to gain the cardiovascular benefits of exercise without placing stress on your joints.
There are many forms of low-intensity cardio workouts you can try at the gym or even at your home, such as walking, jogging, cycling, and swimming.
High-Intensity Cardio Training
High-Intensity cardio training will take your cardio workout to another level, as you push your pace out of your comfort zone. You can use this method with any type of cardio workout, whether it's running, burpees, using a stair-climbing machine, rowing, or jumping rope.
Do this exercise at a very intense level and then backing off for a slower recovery period, followed by another round of high intensity. With this strategy, you don't have to work out as long as you would if you were keeping a steady pace.
Burn your calories, increase strength, improve your aerobic endurance, and aid coordination with our Cardio Conditioning class! This class features a set of intensive exercises designed to improve your cardio strength and endurance.
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