Why Cardio Training Must Be A Part of Your Fitness Program

Everyone wants to either be fit, buff or both nowadays. With ready-made fitness programs that are more accessible to the public, some people don’t even know the basics of why they have to do the exercises that are part of their road to their dream body.

Let’s go back to basics and delve into one of the essential parts of a fitness program, cardiovascular fitness or more commonly termed as cardio. It is usually associated with running and people think it ends with that. But cardio or aerobic exercises is much more than that.

With the help of cardio exercises, the ability of the heart and lungs to supply oxygen to the blood enhances. Not only that, the muscle’s ability to use the said oxygen to supply energy also improves because of doing cardio. This kind of exercise is defined as rhythmic continuous activities that simultaneously adds stress to more than one large muscle groups. The stress challenges the heart and lungs to perform harder than the other parts of the body. All types of cardio will burn off excess calories but there are also some types that were made solely to loss the inches. A trick about fat loss is how it does not depend on the calories burned and the one being gained from consumption.

There are a lot of reasons why doing cardio should not be neglected in your training programs anytime soon. Get acquainted with the importance of exercising one’s heart and lungs. These benefits can only be expected from those who do cardio in a regular schedule.

One of these benefits deal with longevity. In a study conducted by Harvard University, they discovered a direct relationship between cardiovascular fitness with the length of a person’s life. The results showed that those who most frequently did their cardio were more likely to live longer compared to the other samples.

Heart health is also improved when you constantly do cardio. The key to strengthening the muscles are by working the said organ but not to the point of fatigue. A healthy heart can be clearly seen if you can climb stairs and other everyday tasks without running out of breath.

Heart rate isn’t the only thing that will improve when doing cardio exercises. It also affects  your metabolism which is an essential factor in the world of fitness. A person’s metabolic rate is said to be affected by the more intense the cardio session he/she does. Faster metabolisms mean the body makes it easier for the individual to maintain whatever weight he/she is already in at the moment.

A lot of people do cardio for the common reason that it helps with weight management. But it is also important to keep in mind that this shouldn’t be the only reason why cardio is part of your fitness training program. You won’t be burning any excess fat if your diet composes of unhealthy junk and if you don’t pair it with aerobic activity.

Recovery is also improved when you do constant cardio. This process is a vital part of the whole fitness regime. Without it, muscle buildup and other essential processes won’t be possible. There are certain types of cardio than can leave a person to experience difficulty in their recovery time. The good news is that doing the slower paced forms of cardio can decrease the time away from your intense sessions in the gym. Because of this benefit of cardio, an individual can get back on track and continue their fitness regime in the shortest possible time without having to exert their muscles especially the heart, too much.

Recovery is also an important process when building up the muscles in the body. Giving your body the sufficient rest it deserves gives it time for the muscle to heal itself. Too much work and too much break will put all your efforts to waste, which is why it’s important to always keep track of your fitness journey.

For those who have any form of diabetes, doing cardio can work wonders in the body’s ability to manage this condition. The exercises increases the muscle’s ability to utilize glucose and gives better control of one’s bloody sugar. It has also been discovered that exercises lessens the sugar swings experiences by those with diabetes.

A good fitness routine composes of both aerobic and anaerobic exercises. Cardio is aerobic and it focuses on activities that keep the body in motion and the heart rate up. It’s a fairly easy to think of a cardio exercise to do depending on what the person is in the mood to do that day. It’s a huge factor that there are a number of choices for the individual to choose from.

If you’ve just started off with cardio, make sure you don’t overdo it especially in the beginning of the training routine. Individuals are more prone to working too much on certain exercises and they end up with results opposite of what they had hoped for. An average of 30-45 minutes at least three to five times a week is the suggested base line where you can start kicking it up a notch and entering advanced principles of cardio.

A fitness program wouldn’t be as effective without the balance of both aerobic and anaerobic exercises. Although completely different, they each have equal importance in the world of fitness. They enable the individual to reach their optimum self but they are also always reminded of the risks they are undertaking in performing such exercises.

Without cardio, a fitness junkie would lose a sure-fire way of reducing recovery time. Focusing mainly on strength or endurance training could lead to unfavorable results since the tendency would be that the body would get too beaten up by the continued exercises. And that’s where cardio comes in, although just as tedious, it’s wide range of forms make it the perfect choice to give the body a break from the intense training done at the gym. With a wide array of benefits under its belt, it really does seem that cardio isn’t going anywhere. It’s a vital part of the fitness program and it will continue being such even with new workout techniques being constantly introduced to the fitness community.