What is Cardio? | Weight Loss Diets Blog

Introduction

Cardiovascular exercise (often called cardio for short) is any form of exercise that raises your heart rate for a given period of time. Cardio is often also described as aerobic exercise, and this article gives a brief description of the benefits of cardio and some good exercises to get you started.

Health benefits

There are a great many health benefits to cardiovascular exercise. Cardio strengthens and improves the efficiency of the heart, increases lung capacity, and helps to elevate metabolism and therefore burn fat. People who regularly undertake cardiovascular exercise are also less likely to be prone to stress and anxiety, as well as being more likely to experience a sense of general well-being. Better quality sleep and the ability to concentrate more on daily tasks are additional benefits.

Image benefits

In addition to becoming fitter and achieving the above mentioned health benefits, most people undertake cardio exercise regimes to improve their general appearance. People who regularly participate in aerobic exercise generally look and feel healthier, and this often results in a decent boost to their confidence. This can often lead to a person appearing and feeling more attractive and therefore they can experience better results when encountering members of the opposite sex.

Running

Often many people think of running (or jogging) when cardio exercise is mentioned. Running is very popular for several practical reasons ? It can be done anywhere, you only need some good running shoes and some loose clothing and no gym subscription is required. There are many benefits to running (e.g. an increase in cardiovascular fitness and weight loss) but there are some negative aspects. When running, your feet hit the ground with a lot more force than when walking. This means that a lot of impact is absorbed by the joints, particularly knees, ankles and hips. For heavier people, this affect is increased. For many people it?s better to start with brisk walking ? another good alternative is swimming.

Swimming

Many people consider swimming to be the king of cardio exercise. Swimming creates no pressure on the joints as you are supported by the water you are swimming in. Swimming is also a highly compound exercise, meaning that most muscles in your body are exercised. Learning to swim correctly is very important (if you don?t you?ll find yourself very inefficient and prone to becoming tired very quickly. Swimming enjoys huge popularity across all age groups, and you?ll see people as young as 6 and as old as 80 doing huge numbers of laps in most local pools. Start slowly and gradually build up and you?ll be soon be able to keep up.

Jump rope

As a long time martial artists, jumping rope (skipping) is one of my personal favourite aerobic exercises. Proper form takes a few weeks to develop, but once you can skip properly jumping rope is an excellent way to get fit and lose weight. Start off slowly (5 minutes will get you tired if you?re not used to it) then build up gradually. As an example o the level of fitness this can help develop, many martial artists (boxers, MMA fighters etc) jump rope for half an hour as a warm up!

Closing comments

There you go then. I?ve briefly answered the question ?what is cardio? told you about some of the benefits and given some example exercises to get you started. I hope this article has been useful

Source: http://www.ohiobiohazardousrecovery.com/what-is-cardio/

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