You may already be familiar with the term “cardio.” This form of exercise is designed to strengthen the heart and improve overall heart, lung, and body health. But what exactly is cardio?
For those who are unaware, cardio exercise refers to a type of physical activity that enhances the function of your cardiovascular system, including your blood vessels, heart, and lungs. In other words, engaging in cardio exercises will consistently elevate your heart rate.
Many people often use the terms “cardio” and “aerobic” interchangeably. Aerobic exercises primarily focus on activities that require ample oxygen intake, thus engaging the respiratory organs, such as the heart and lungs, similar to cardio exercises. The types of aerobic and cardio exercises overlap, including activities like running, cycling, swimming, and more.
Before diving into specific examples of cardio exercises, let’s explore the benefits they offer!
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What Are The Benefits of Cardio Exercise?
Cardio exercises use the large muscles in your body for long periods, and keep your heart rate at 50% of its full capacity. As a result, you also have a stronger cardiovascular system with more oxygen supply. Your stamina and body resistance will automatically increase. However, apart from that, there are also other health benefits of this type of workout!
1.Improve Heart Health
About 30-60 minutes of regular cardio exercise every day can help you build stronger muscles, including heart muscles. If the heart muscle is healthy, the health risks are automatically smaller. Here are the health risks that you can prevent with regular cardio exercise:
- High blood pressure
- Excessive anxiety and stress
- Heart disease
- High blood sugar and diabetes
- Blockage of blood vessels
- Maintain Brain Health
Studies show that regular cardio exercise trains certain parts of the brain, especially memory and cognitive function. This can prevent or reduce the risk of shrinking brain volume, especially in the elderly. In addition, cardio also helps you sleep better. With better quality sleep, the brain can function better and your mental health is more awake.
2.Increases Metabolic Rate
All types of cardio exercise can increase your metabolic rate. This means that you burn more calories during activities, and help maintain your appetite so you don’t overeat.
3.Maintain Ideal Body Weight
By getting your heart rate up, cardio workout can help to burn excess calories thereby you will be able to maintain your ideal body weight.
4.Maintain Mood and Increase Energy
Cardio exercise stimulates the formation of endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine, which are chemical compounds that make you feel happier and more enthusiastic about going about your day. Wonderful side effects also include:
- Lower stress levels
- Increase body stamina
- Sharpen your focused
- Increase Body Immune
Regular exercise increases the production of antibodies and white blood cells that protect your body from infectious disease infections. In addition, your metabolism and immune system as a whole also increase, so you are more protected from the risk of diseases, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and strokes.
5.Preventing the Risk of Arthritis
Exercise reduces the risk of joint and muscle stiffness. Therefore, the risk of joint diseases such as arthritis will be lower when you exercise. Even if you still have arthritis, the pain isn’t as bad as if you don’t exercise.
What Are The Examples of Cardio Exercises You Can Do at Home?
So, now that you know the many benefits of cardio exercise, we also have some recommendations for easy cardio exercise that you can do at home!
- Burpees can accelerate the rate of burning calories, this type of cardio exercise can make you spend 100 calories in just 10 minutes.
- Not only as a child’s game, jumping rope is a very effective cardio exercise that you can do at home. You can use a rope that is the right length and try slowly. Focus on a small target first, say 10 seconds. Then increase to 20 seconds, up to 30 seconds. If you can find the right rhythm and don’t stumble anymore, you can try to do longer sessions. Also, make sure you also rotate the rope using your wrist and not your arm.
- Jumping jacks can use up the same number of calories as burpees. To do it is also simple, you just need to jump to spread your legs with your hands raised above your head until you clap your hands. You can also do 15-30 jumping jacks, then combine them with various other types of exercise, such as burpees, mountain climbers, or lunges. If you are more advanced, you can increase the number of jumping jacks up to 50-100 times. Jumping Jack is a quite high-impact exercise type. Thus know that there are possibilities of health risks in the form of joint pain after you have done this exercise. Therefore, make sure you wear comfortable equipment and have warmed up before exercising.
Working out can be very much tiring and make you hesitant to do it regularly. Especially if you are already busy with your daily work and activity. But, you can do cardio anywhere even at your home with limited equipment, thus you don’t have to worry about needing to go out to workout!
To make you much more in high spirits to work out, don’t forget to purchase new workout gear and added equipment to support your exercise routine even more. Get your hands on affordable workout gear and equipment at the e-commerce Temu.
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